McKinsey research into mid-mile and last-mile handovers found that waste created at blind handoffs between shippers, dispatchers, third-party logistics providers, and carriers accounts for between 6% and 13% of carrier revenue, with dwell time identified as a primary driver.
That figure describes one challenge on this list. It is the one most often left off. What follows is ten structural pressures facing logistics operations, sorted by what technology can genuinely do about each.
How to read this list
Most challenge lists exist to sell a solution, so every item is presented as solvable by whatever the author is selling. That is not useful for planning a budget.
MIXMOVE frames the distinction that matters. Some pressures are external and cannot be removed, only absorbed better. Some are structural and can be genuinely reduced. Confusing the two is how software budgets get spent on the wrong problem and produce disappointing results that get blamed on the software.
Challenges technology can address directly
1. Waste at handovers. The largest addressable cost in most networks and the least visible. It occurs where responsibility changes hands between parties, systems, or shifts, and no system in a conventional stack owns it. This is the item most lists omit.
2. Low vehicle utilisation. Half-empty vehicles carry the full cost of the journey. Consolidation is the highest-return intervention available and requires no capital expenditure, but it depends on knowing what is arriving before it arrives.
3. Demand variability and forecasting. Demand shifts faster than replenishment cycles were designed for. Forecasting at network level has been possible for years. Forecasting per site, which is what a lean network needs, is the harder problem and the one that determines whether reduced buffers work.
4. Infrastructure bottlenecks. A congested hub is frequently sequence-constrained rather than space-constrained. Testing throughput under improved sequencing before committing capital often removes the case for new property entirely.
5. Rising customer expectations. Narrower delivery windows require sequencing to be known before departure rather than discovered during the round. This is squarely a systems problem.
Challenges technology can only soften
6. Rising fuel and energy costs. Nothing controls the price. What is controllable is how much fuel is consumed moving air, which returns to utilisation. Route optimisation helps at the margin. Fill rate helps considerably more.
7. Labour shortages and cost. Software does not create staff. It changes what a given number of people can accomplish, principally by removing rework, which consumes capacity at exactly the moment capacity is scarcest.
8. Cybersecurity exposure. Risk cannot be eliminated. It can be managed through independently verified controls. MIXMOVE is certified to ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type II, and operates in line with GDPR and NIS2 requirements. Certification is evidence; a description of good practice is not.
Challenges technology cannot touch
9. Regulatory change. No platform absorbs regulatory change without intervention, and claims to the contrary should be treated sceptically. What good systems do is make compliance cheaper to demonstrate. Under CSRD, transport emissions must be traceable to activity data, and under ETS2 they carry a direct cost. A system that captures execution at the point of the event makes both reportable. It does not interpret the regulation for you.
10. Supply chain disruption and geopolitical instability. Disruption cannot be prevented. What can change is the speed of response, which depends on whether allocations can be revised during the day or only in the next planning cycle.
The one that connects most of them
Read the list again and a pattern appears. Utilisation, bottlenecks, expectations, fuel consumed, labour absorbed by rework, and disruption response all trace back to the same thing.
Each is a consequence of decisions made without information that already existed elsewhere in the same operation. The freight arrives before anyone knows what is on it. The vehicle departs before anyone evaluates whether waiting would have filled it. The plan is fixed before the day’s demand has finished arriving.
That is why handover waste sits at the top of the list rather than the bottom. It is not one challenge among ten. It is the mechanism through which several of the others become expensive.
What the evidence shows
McKinsey attributes between 6% and 13% of carrier revenue to waste at handover points, with dwell time named as a leading driver.
Deloitte reports that 66% of retail executives surveyed plan to restructure their supply chains if input costs rise, with 30% using AI for supply chain visibility rising to an expected 41% within a year, and 59% anticipating positive return on investment within 12 months.
The European Environment Agency identifies road freight as one of the fastest-growing sources of transport emissions, driven by rising delivery volumes and low vehicle utilisation.
Across MIXMOVE deployments, hub operations have recorded up to 130% higher warehouse hub throughput, up to 80% fewer errors, up to 50% less warehouse space, and up to 58% labour cost savings. Dwell time reductions of 40% and fill rate improvements of 10% to 20% have been recorded. The platform is in use across 35+ distribution companies in 20+ countries.
At 3M, a decade of collaboration produced a 90% truck fill rate, a 35% reduction in transport costs, and a 50% reduction in CO₂ emissions.
“By using the MIXMOVE software, 3M managed to reduce transport costs by 35% and CO₂ emissions by 50%.”
— Patrick Van De Vyver, Former Head of EMEA Logistics Operations, 3M
Where orchestration changes the picture
MIXMOVE HUB OS addresses the first group directly. Freight is identified at item level on arrival and matched against live outbound commitments before unloading decisions are made, which is where handover waste is created and where utilisation is decided.
Sortation instructions surface at the point of work, so the decision reaches the dock while the freight is still there. Recorded throughput gains of up to 130% indicate how much of what looks like a bottleneck is in fact sequencing.
MIXMOVE DI works at the network level, identifying where dwell concentrates, which lanes lose utilisation, and which exceptions repeat, which is how the second group gets softened rather than absorbed. It also structures Scope 3 transport reporting to ISO 14083 methodology.
Both operate alongside an existing TMS, WMS, or ERP, or as a standalone platform.
Some of these pressures are external and permanent. Several are consequences of information arriving too late. Operations that separate the two stop spending software budgets on problems software cannot reach.
Read the MIXMOVE HUB OS overview to see how handover waste is removed at the dock.
Frequently asked questions
What are the main challenges in modern logistics?
Waste at handovers, low vehicle utilisation, demand variability, infrastructure bottlenecks, rising customer expectations, fuel and energy costs, labour shortages, cybersecurity exposure, regulatory change, and supply chain disruption.
Which logistics challenges can software actually solve?
Handover waste, utilisation, forecasting at site level, sequencing bottlenecks, and delivery window precision. Fuel prices, labour supply, regulatory change, and geopolitical disruption can be absorbed better but not removed.
What is the largest hidden cost in logistics?
Waste generated at handovers between parties, systems, and shifts. McKinsey puts it at between 6% and 13% of carrier revenue, with dwell time as the leading driver, and it rarely appears as a line in any report.
Where should an operation start?
With the challenges that are consequences rather than causes. Utilisation, bottlenecks, and rework all trace back to decisions made without information that existed elsewhere in the same operation.
