IN Brief:
- Thirty-six per cent of surveyed EMEA shippers plan to increase the proportion of deliveries they outsource.
- Among fully outsourced businesses, 51% rank unreliable carrier information as their main challenge, compared with 22% citing costs.
- Ninety-six per cent of respondents report higher delivery costs, while 18% say they have deployed artificial intelligence at scale.
FarEye has found that 36% of surveyed shippers across Europe, the Middle East and Africa intend to increase the proportion of deliveries handled by external partners. Operational flexibility was a stronger stated motivation than reducing costs, although the company’s research also identifies a substantial information gap among businesses that have already outsourced their entire delivery operation. The figures describe the intentions and experiences of survey respondents, not contracts signed or volumes transferred to logistics providers.
The Eye on the Last Mile EMEA 2026 study draws on responses from more than 500 logistics and delivery leaders, including both shippers and service providers. Researchers gathered more than 4,000 data points across 32 questions, and FarEye presented the regional findings in Amsterdam on 14 October. The 36% outsourcing figure applies to the shipper group, while several other results concern all respondents or a subset using a particular operating model. That distinction is essential when comparing plans with the experiences of fully outsourced businesses.
Outsourcing can allow a shipper to adjust delivery capacity when shipment volumes rise, seasonal demand changes or coverage is needed beyond its own transport network. It can also shift vehicle provision, driver allocation and some dispatch activity to contracted partners. Control of service performance, however, still depends on the shipper receiving sufficiently timely and consistent information about collections, failed attempts, handovers and completed deliveries. The more carriers and subcontractors involved, the more interfaces may be required to maintain a coherent record of each shipment.
Among respondents whose businesses outsource all deliveries, 51% identified unreliable carrier information as their biggest challenge. Only 22% selected high costs as the leading problem. These figures do not mean that cost is unimportant to the remaining respondents; each measures the challenge selected as the most significant. Nor do they show that one carrier is less reliable than another, because no provider-level performance comparison was disclosed in the available research.
Status information can become difficult to reconcile when carriers define and transmit events differently. A collection scan, arrival at a depot, attempted delivery and signed receipt may each be captured by separate systems. Some networks send updates immediately, while others transfer batches of records after an event has occurred. Missing identifiers or inconsistent timestamps can prevent a shipper’s central platform from matching events to the right consignment. Those operational mechanisms help explain why accurate carrier information becomes more important as delivery work is distributed, but the survey does not quantify the frequency of individual data errors.
Some 96% of respondents reported an increase in cost per delivery over the previous year, with a typical rise of 9%. Separately, 76% said delivery costs were growing at least as quickly as revenue. The percentages reflect participants’ reported experience and should not be treated as audited regional expenditure or as a freight-rate index applicable to every shipment type. Different delivery networks can have materially different density, handling requirements and unsuccessful-delivery rates.
Of the businesses using their own fleets, 60% reported costs growing faster than revenue; the equivalent figure was 26% among fully outsourced respondents. Both are proportions within different groups, rather than measured cost savings attributable to an outsourcing contract. Changes in route density, geography, shipment mix, labour requirements and service commitments could affect either group’s results. These percentages do not isolate those variables or establish that switching operating models causes the difference.
Several expenses emerge after a carrier has accepted a consignment. An unsuccessful first attempt can require another vehicle visit; an exception without a timely status message may generate additional customer enquiries and manual tracing; and incomplete proof of delivery can delay reconciliation between a shipper and its provider. These processes contribute to delivery costs, but no regional monetary breakdown by exception type was provided. It is therefore not possible to infer a saving per parcel from improved visibility alone.
Delivery reliability also featured more strongly than speed in respondents’ assessment of customer priorities. Reliability was selected by 63%, compared with 11% choosing speed, yet 43% of surveyed businesses offered same-day or express services. Only 27% displayed an expected delivery date before checkout. These are answers to different questions: the findings describe what businesses believe customers prioritise, the services operators offer and the information shown to customers. They are not a direct survey of consumer preferences or evidence that every expedited service is unnecessary.
While 69% of surveyed businesses said they were implementing or already using artificial intelligence in delivery operations, only 18% reported deployment at scale. Demand forecasting and customer support were among the applications identified. A limited implementation does not establish that all contracted carriers supply the structured data needed for automated exception management. Respondents also identified skills, data quality and systems integration as obstacles, without reporting a verified reduction in delivery cost attributable to a particular AI tool.
Shippers can specify event definitions, tracking identifiers, update intervals, proof-of-delivery standards and procedures for missing scans alongside prices and service levels in carrier contracts. Performance reviews may also separate a late delivery from a late status update, since the two failures require different remedies. Such requirements are practical options for contract design, not guarantees that a carrier will achieve a given delivery target.
Shippers planning increased outsourcing have not necessarily committed additional volumes or selected providers. Their stated preference for flexibility sits alongside the finding that unreliable carrier information is the principal complaint of many companies already using a fully outsourced model. How much planned outsourcing becomes operational capacity, and whether suppliers can exchange the necessary delivery data consistently, cannot be determined from the published survey figures.
