IN Brief:
- GXO found that 64% of UK businesses want to reduce fleet environmental impact but do not know how.
- Transport cost pressure is intensifying, with 89% of operators expecting costs to rise over the next 12 months.
- The report links emissions reduction, collaboration, fleet optimisation, and real-time visibility as connected parts of transport performance.
GXO has published new research showing that UK businesses are prioritising lower-emission transport but still struggling to convert sustainability targets into operational change.
The first report in GXO’s Future of Transport series found that 64% of UK businesses want to reduce the environmental impact of their transport fleets but do not know how to begin. Emissions reduction is now a key priority for 87% of businesses, up from 81% in 2024, although practical planning remains uneven.
The research is based on a survey of more than 1,000 senior decision makers in UK supply chain and logistics organisations. It identifies cost resilience, low-emission transport, operational digitalisation, fleet optimisation, and network collaboration as core priorities for the next phase of UK logistics planning.
Cost pressure is intensifying across transport operations. GXO found that 89% of transport operators expect costs to rise over the next 12 months, with more than a third expecting significant increases. Nearly 60% of businesses expect future duty changes to have a material impact on operating costs, adding to pressure from fuel, labour, maintenance, insurance, and vehicle investment.
The report connects operational efficiency directly with emissions reduction. Better route planning, fewer empty miles, improved load utilisation, and shared logistics networks reduce fuel consumption as well as cost. GXO found that 86% of transport operators now see collaboration between logistics networks as central to lowering costs and emissions, compared with 65% in 2024.
Investment in optimisation is increasing, with 85% of respondents reporting higher spend on fleet optimisation. Alternative fuel planning is less mature. Only 35% of organisations strongly agree that they have a clear strategy and defined timeline for adoption, leaving many operators with ambition but no firm route through vehicle choice, infrastructure, depot readiness, and duty-cycle planning.
Fleet decarbonisation rarely starts with a clean vehicle purchase. Electrification, HVO, biomethane, hydrogen, and other alternatives each bring constraints around range, cost, availability, maintenance, charging or refuelling infrastructure, and operational fit. Without a clear view of current route behaviour, load utilisation, delivery windows, and empty mileage, the choice of alternative fuel risks being made on aspiration rather than evidence.
Weak transport technology is already creating measurable strain. Businesses without the right systems reported higher maintenance costs, longer delivery times, and higher CO₂ emissions. Poor visibility leads to underfilled vehicles, avoidable mileage, weak exception management, inefficient maintenance planning, and slower responses when disruption enters the network.
GXO’s separate UK and Ireland Logistics Accelerator has already put operational innovation and logistics transformation into focus. The Future of Transport report narrows the issue to transport execution, where companies recognise the need for change but often lack the data, systems, and collaborative structures to sequence it properly.
The transport sector is moving toward a more data-led operating model because cost and sustainability targets are increasingly aligned. A route that removes empty miles improves emissions and fuel use. Better load planning improves asset utilisation. Real-time visibility reduces failed deliveries and unnecessary rework. Shared networks can reduce duplication across customers, sectors, and geographies.
The obstacle is often organisational. Transport teams inherit fragmented systems, inconsistent data, customer-specific processes, legacy contracts, and planning habits that make collaboration difficult. Digital tools can improve the picture, but only where businesses standardise processes, share capacity where appropriate, and make decisions on network-wide performance rather than route-level habit.
Businesses that delay optimisation risk higher costs, weaker service, and slower progress against emissions targets. Those that build visibility first can improve resilience before the next cost shock arrives. Sustainability in transport is no longer a separate workstream from performance; it is becoming one of the clearest indicators of whether transport networks are being planned well enough.
