For years, last-mile delivery was treated mainly as a routing problem: plan the stops, get the truck out, hope the day holds together. Pete Elmgren, President and COO of DispatchTrack, argues that view is now too narrow.
In an interview with The Loadstar, he said the pressure on operators is coming from several directions at once. Customers expect tighter windows and better updates. Retailers, manufacturers and 3PLs are trying to protect margin. And every missed delivery, poor handover or inefficient route now shows up quickly in cost, capacity and customer satisfaction.
“There are inefficiencies in terms of how customers and partners are gathering data to make smarter, more intelligent decisions,” Elmgren said. “The other piece is around the manual and legacy routing that a lot of companies still use today.”
The third problem is communication. Phone calls alone are no longer enough. Operators now need text, email, chat, live tracking, delivery photos and exception updates to sit in the same workflow rather than being scattered across teams and systems.
More than Route Optimisation
DispatchTrack started more than 16 years ago in furniture and appliances, but has since moved into building supplies, food and beverage, medical supplies and other sectors where delivery is complex and costly to fix when it goes wrong.
Elmgren said the company’s pitch is built around the data it has collected over that time. In a market where almost every logistics software provider is talking about AI, he argued the useful question is not whether a product has an AI label, but whether it has enough operational data to make the tool work in the field.
“We’ve been in business for over 16 years, and so we’ve been collecting data,” he said. “We’ve been doing machine learning for over 16 years.”
DispatchTrack groups its AI work into machine learning, agentic AI and generative AI. Its Driver AI product is aimed at stop-level details that often make or break a delivery: gate codes, parking instructions, construction-site access and apartment layouts. DT Agent is used for order-status questions, rescheduling and delivery timing.
Consumer Expectations have Moved into Freight
The parcel market has trained customers to expect visibility. Elmgren said those expectations have moved into heavier and less predictable delivery categories, including appliances, HVAC units, medical products and building materials that often require white-glove delivery.
“The expectations have increased dramatically,” he said. “That expectation has now transferred to the business world.”
That does not make a two-person appliance delivery the same as a parcel drop. Installation, paperwork, compliance, product testing, photos, billing and settlements can all sit around the delivery itself. But the customer still wants to know when the product is coming, whether the driver is close and what happens if the job changes.
The Driver Supply Question
Driver availability remains disputed in logistics. Some operators describe a shortage; others say the industry has a pay, retention or working-conditions problem. Elmgren framed it as a shortage of qualified labour, particularly for more demanding delivery environments.
Either way, DispatchTrack’s argument is that operators have to get more out of the drivers and dispatchers they already have. Elmgren said the aim might be moving a driver from eight stops a day to 10 without damaging the delivery experience.
“You’ve got to create that loyalty, and that loyalty comes through that really good customer experience,” he said.
He added that customers moving from manual to automated routing have seen efficiency gains “well in the 20 to 30%” range.
Planning for the spike
Peak planning is another use case for DispatchTrack’s data. Elmgren pointed to the company’s strategic planner, which helps customers model capacity around seasonal demand, promotions and category-specific surges that may not follow the usual fourth-quarter pattern.
Existing customers can use their own performance and order history. Newer customers can lean on industry and sub-industry patterns. “If you’re doing these things, we’ve seen this before,” he said.
Elmgren also sees new routing variables entering the mix, including warehouse management needs for 3PLs and alternative vehicle types. EVs, for example, bring questions around range, charging time and fuel economics.
For DispatchTrack, the differentiator is that the last mile is no longer only about getting the route right; it’s become about coordinating the route, the warehouse, the driver, the customer and the exception when the original plan breaks. That may sound less tidy than a simple routing pitch, but it is much closer to the way delivery days actually unfold.
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