Towards Sustainable Urban Freight: A Collaborative Business Model Framework for Last-Mile Consolidation Centres

Urban freight transport is responsible for creating negative transport externalities in the form of noise and congestion and has a significant environmental impact. One solution is to establish a freight consolidation centre, which could offer benefits such as shorter delivery distances, and fewer delivery routes. However, this would require collaboration between actors with conflicting interests and goals. In this study, we propose a collaborative business model framework for freight consolidation centres. This framework was tested through a pilot project in Gothenburg, using the principles of engaged scholarship. Our results show that last-mile consolidation significantly increases efficiency and enables sustainability gains to be achieved. However, a number of structural, economic and organisational barriers need to be addressed in order to realise the full benefit of the collaborative business model. There is a need for a deeper institualisation of new norms, procedures and policies in the business models of the individual actors involved.