The biggest challenge in urban distribution is often in the last few meters. Ahead of his session at the Logistics & Delivery Lunch Event, Melle Sprenger explains why deliveries get stuck there and how technology can help drivers.
When companies improve their delivery operation, they typically focus on routes, vehicles and traffic congestion. According to Melle Sprenger, CTO and co-founder of RoutiGo, however, a large part of the problems arise elsewhere: at the moment a driver has to stop, park and unload. It is precisely in those last meters that urban distribution becomes complex.
During the Logistics & Delivery Lunch Event on 19 March 2026, Melle will show why that is and how technology can better support drivers there. In this blog you can already read a brief preview of his session.
On paper, a stop seems simple: an address, a package and a delivery driver who arrives. In an inner city, things often work differently. A driver can turn into a street and discover that a truck is unloading, that a contractor has cordoned off part of the street, or that a delivery to a shop cannot be made through the front but must go through an alley or back door.
An address therefore tells you very little about where a driver actually needs to be. In practice, drivers often first have to figure out where they can park and how to get from there to the right entrance. That search takes time and means a stop can take longer than planned.
Every delivery consists of two phases. First, the driver drives to the location where the delivery takes place. Then comes the last stretch on foot, from the vehicle to the door or entrance of the address.
In inner cities, that second part often becomes larger. Drivers park their vehicle in one place and then walk along multiple addresses within the same zone. In effect, a second route emerges — but on foot.
This makes it difficult to navigate drivers in inner cities to one specific parking spot. The situation on the street constantly changes and a spot that seems logical in the planning may simply not be available at the time of arrival.
That is why the RoutiGo Driver App works with zones rather than one exact stop location. As soon as a driver enters such a zone, they receive a notification that they have reached the delivery area and that they should find a suitable place to park. At the same time, they can see how many deliveries need to be made within that zone.
With that information, the driver can determine on the spot where it is best to stop and then efficiently complete the deliveries within that area.
At the moment the driver parks their vehicle and picks up their phone from the cradle, the system recognises that the context has changed. The driver is no longer driving but is beginning the delivery portion of the route.
In the latest product development from RoutiGo, the Driver App automatically switches at that moment to an overview map of the area. On that map, the driver sees where they are, which addresses are in the zone and which packages belong to them.
That overview makes it possible to determine at a glance in which order the deliveries can best be carried out.
The zone approach is an important step towards better supporting drivers in the last meters. At the same time, RoutiGo is already working on further development in which more and more practical information from previous trips is collected and made available again to drivers.
Think, for example, of insight into spots where drivers in a particular zone have previously parked successfully. When a driver enters such an area, the system can suggest multiple possible parking spots based on that historical data.
But it goes beyond parking alone. Practical information about locations can also be recorded and shared with other drivers, such as which entrance should be used, that a delivery goes via the yellow door, or what the pin code of an access gate is.
The goal is for this information to reach the driver at exactly the right moment. Not as text on a screen, but for example through an earpiece while they walk to the location. This way, they can immediately hear where they need to be and what instructions apply, without having to read information first.
At the same time, the system can continue to gather new knowledge. While a driver walks back to their vehicle, they can easily report via their earpiece how the delivery went. If, for example, they report that there is an aggressive dog at an address, the next delivery driver can immediately be warned.
This way, sharing information costs the driver no extra time, and the system becomes smarter with every trip as practical experiences are automatically added.
During his session, Melle will show where urban distribution often gets stuck in practice and how technology can better support drivers precisely in the last meters. He will show how zones, real-time information and practical data help make deliveries in busy inner cities more manageable and predictable.
Curious about how that works in practice? Sign up for the Logistics & Delivery Lunch Event and discover during his session how smart technology helps to better organise urban distribution.
