By Nishith Rastogi, founder and CEO of Locus
As fleets head into 2026, distance efficiency is becoming as important as what vehicles are on the road.
How far vehicles travel now has a direct bearing on cost, emissions and service performance across fleets, shaping sustainability outcomes across day-to-day operations.
The planned and expected EV pay per mile charge from 2028 brings this into sharper focus.
Distance that once blended into overall running costs will trigger a visible charge for every mile driven, making inefficiencies harder to absorb or ignore.
At the same time, tighter ZEV targets and the move towards UK Sustainability Reporting Standards are increasing pressure to show emissions progress that can be measured, audited and linked directly to mileage.
Taken together, these pressures push more attention onto how daily planning decisions shape the total distance fleets drive, and how efficiently that distance is used to deliver service.
Why traditional planning leaves distance unmanaged
Traditional planning assumes the day will run as scheduled, but most of the factors that change distance only appear once vehicles are already moving.
As traffic builds unevenly across the network and customer availability shifts after schedules are set, drivers and planners step in to make practical adjustments.
Delivery timings and sequences change to protect service, but those decisions are made locally and under time pressure, often adding extra miles without being visible as a single outcome.
In most cases, loads stay with the vehicles they were first assigned to. Capacity that opens elsewhere in the fleet goes unused because the day has already settled into a fixed pattern. Work follows the original plan even when conditions no longer support efficient mileage.
By the time vehicles return, service has usually been delivered, but the distance behind it has grown quietly. These small adjustments add up across the day, widening the gap between planned and actual mileage without ever being viewed as one outcome.
As the day unfolds, opportunities to rebalance work across the fleet narrow quickly. Distance is only reviewed once operations have finished, often as part of cost or emissions reporting.
By then, the kilometres have already been driven. Fleets can account for them, but they cannot influence them in real time.
Making distance a live operational decision
Reducing unnecessary mileage depends on being able to adjust routes while the day is still unfolding, before disruption turns into extra distance elsewhere in the network.
Once miles are driven they cannot be recovered, which makes in-day planning the last meaningful chance to influence total distance.
Adaptive and agentic planning systems support this by giving planners live visibility of fleet performance. They test routing options against traffic, vehicle range, driver hours and commitments, allowing work to be adjusted before inefficiencies become fixed.
When this happens early, distance accumulates differently. Spare capacity can be used when it first appears, reducing lightly loaded legs and empty running, and avoiding miles added simply to protect service. Predictive delivery reinforces this by improving ETA accuracy and reducing missed deliveries and re-delivery attempts.
Human planners remain in control, but decisions are grounded in current conditions rather than static assumptions.
Leadership focus in 2026
As planning becomes more adaptive, distance management moves into a clearer leadership view. Attention shifts from fleet composition alone to how effectively distance is being used day to day.
Utilisation, empty running and re-delivery mileage now matter beyond operations. With EV pay per mile expected and UK Sustainability Reporting Standards increasing external visibility, this data increasingly sits with finance and sustainability teams as well as transport managers.
Fleets that align EV adoption with more adaptive and auditable planning will be better placed to show progress before new costs and reporting requirements take effect.
In 2026, credibility will rest on evidence, and distance efficiency will be one of the clearest signals that a fleet is genuinely operating more sustainably.
