Major shippers and carriers are accelerating their electrification timelines for last-mile delivery, even as infrastructure and cost challenges continue to slow broader fleet transitions.
Purolator, for example, has 6% of its last-mile fleet electrified today and plans to reach 14% by the end of the year.
“Our goal is to get to 60% of our last-mile by 2030,” said Cindy Bailey, corporate sustainability officer at Purolator, during a zero-emission panel at the recent EV & Charging Expo in Toronto. The carrier now delivers about 400,000 packages per month in EVs across Canada and has electrified 11 sites, with 10 more planned this year, Bailey said.
She added growing customer expectations are helping push the company to stay the course. “What I’m starting to see is that customers really feel that this is now table stakes for them. I’ve had some customers very recently where you couldn’t even come to the table if you didn’t have electric vehicles or low-carbon transportation solutions to offer,” she said. “Especially when we think about a lot of our European customers; they have very ambitious targets that they have to meet.”
Retailer Ikea is one of those customers. Andrew Losier, zero-emission project implementation manager at Ikea, said the company is now aiming to complete more than 90% of its home deliveries with zero-emission trucks by 2028 globally. In Canada, it is targeting 64% by August 2025, with a current rate of 43% as of April. “That translates to about 27,000 orders. And that’s just big and bulky orders,” Losier said. “And then we also have partners like Purolator to do our parcel delivery as well, with zero-emission trucks.”
“We do have charging at all of our fulfillment units,” he added, explaining that enabling reliable overnight depot charging has helped drivers start each day with a full battery. Ikea also covers charging costs for drivers and earns LCFS (low-carbon fuel standard) credits on the electricity used.
For companies like Purolator and Ikea, incentives, carbon credits, and maintenance savings are part of the business case. But Bailey emphasized that early action offers another benefit: influence.
“Being early, we’re having the opportunity to not only utilize [incentives] but also to influence those things as well,” she said. “We get to learn, we get to lead. We get to take advantage of a lot of the incentives that are available in the market.”
Last-mile electrification strategies are not just about hardware. Bailey said Purolator is taking an “EV-first” mindset internally, training drivers and technicians and managing infrastructure even at complex depots where indoor loading bays shift position during the day. “You really need to think about the end-to-end journey, and you need to make sure that you bring everyone along with you,” she said.
Losier added that Ikea is aligning its contract terms with the length of EV leases to support partners. “If EV leases are five or six years, let’s say, maybe we can extend our contracts with the providers to match that term. Or to get as close to that term as possible, to allow them to have that sort of ROI, or that payback on those EVs as well…If you do have an EV [and] you’re a driver, we have work for you.”
Still, charging remains a major pain point for smaller operators, said Gabriela Favaron, director of EV infrastructure at 7Gen, a fleet management and leasing company.
Many of the independent service providers working under 3PLs don’t have access to real estate for depot charging and are reluctant to spend time at facilities instead of making deliveries. “They want to just pick up the package and go,” she said.
Favaron said 7Gen works with fleets and owner-operators to deploy charging solutions ranging from home installs to public charging reimbursement models. “It’s not a one-size-fits-all,” she said. Their lease-to-own structure, for example, aims to help smaller fleets and pilot users start with minimal upfront capital, extending over seven to 10 years tied to battery warranties.
Speaking of the lessons learned on the electrification journey, all three panelists said driver satisfaction was a positive surprise. “I think the biggest surprise for me is just the driver feedback,” Losier said. “It’s cleaner air, it’s a much smoother ride…There’s not really a monetary ROI on that piece of it, but there is something to be said about taking care of the drivers that are doing these deliveries.”
However, Bailey warned that power availability remains a significant constraint, which was an unpleasant realization for the fleet. In some locations, Purolator had to deploy modified shipping containers outfitted with chargers to work around delays in electrical upgrades.
