Controlling the uncontrollables
Published 14/5/2026
Fuel is a routing problem - and so is almost every other ‘uncontrollable’ cost
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Has there ever been a time when drivers spent more time craning their necks at every petrol price board or pulling over to top up a tank still three-quarters full?
Welcome to the fuel crisis of 2026.
For fleet operators, the pain runs deeper than anything you, I, or Gary from IT feels at the bowser.
83% of local fleet operators say fuel price volatility is their biggest challenge in 2026, according to Shippit research. In response, five in six have either introduced temporary fuel surcharges, absorbed the cost, or renegotiated contracts with major customers.
Only one in six have optimised their fleets or routes to use less fuel in the first place. Too many logistics leaders are still focused on cost recovery rather than cost prevention - that means tackling the kilometre that generates it.
In Delivered this week, Helen Studley, Senior Product Manager at NowGo by Shippit, explains why the ‘uncontrollables’ - from fuel costs, to labour shortages and weather events - are actually far more controllable than fleet operators believe.
TL;DR
- 83% of fleet operators say fuel price volatility is their biggest challenge in 2026, yet only one in six are proactively addressing the issue at source
- Most fleets still choose surcharges (which protect this month's margin) rather than route optimisation (reduces next month's fuel bill)
- While the cause of challenges - fuel prices, driver shortages, weather events - are uncontrollable, their impact most definitely is
Removing the “short-term layup” mentality
That five in six fleets are focused on reactive cost recovery like surcharges or new contracts, rather than proactive cost prevention like route optimisation isn’t a surprise to Helen.
“Logistics is a physical industry, and getting a physical industry to undergo a digital transformation is a huge change," she says.
“It's a really hard journey. I’m sympathetic to that, but it's a long-term investment. It's an opportunity, if not a necessity, to protect your fleet's long-term viability and profitability."
Margin pressure makes the short-term fix feel like the only fix operators can afford.
“It's the classic short-term versus long-term solution layup," Helen adds. “You can switch up your surcharge from 15 to 45% and pass that on to your customer to protect your baseline. You can do that at a week's notice. Whereas something like a digital transformation can easily take months, if not years, to do it right."
“Margins are super thin, and it's hard to think long-term when you're not worrying that ‘oh no, my margins are already thin and here's another cost flying at me. I absolutely understand the short-term scramble to try and recover that margin. But long-term, there are bigger-picture optimisations that can reduce that cost and establish a bigger margin."
Surcharges can save a month here or a quarter there, but they’re not a foundation on which to scale a business over years or decades.
The word is cost, not price
Supply chains are messy, complex, and vulnerable to disruption.
But today, logistics operators can exert control over them. If they have the right mindset and the right tools, that is. Many might argue that fuel prices are simply out of their control, but that’s the wrong mindset Helen argues.
“The key word here is fuel costs rather than fuel price. We can't control the pump price, absolutely. But we can control how much we use on a day-to-day basis. It's a classic case of ‘do more with less’."
“There are things like vehicle maintenance, making sure your tyres are filled to the right pressure. Then there’s load utilisation; why send out a truck half empty and then have it fully empty coming back?
“Or driver behaviour, so making sure there's no harsh braking, even counting how many right-hand turns versus left-hand turns. And just general route efficiency. All of those things are little incremental changes that, over time, add up. Shaving off five kilometres a day doesn’t sound like much, but think about that over 100 drivers.”
So we did think about that over 100 drivers:
- Shave 5km off each route, across a fleet of 100 vehicles
- That's 500km saved per day
- At 12 litres per 100km and $3/litre for diesel, that's around $180 a day
- Over a year: roughly $50,000
Where fleets quietly waste fuel
Many operators identify backhauls - returning to the depot empty - as a key area to address. But it’s not the only ‘quiet’ source of wasted fuel. Far from it, in fact.
“Ad hoc jobs as well,” Helen explains.
“A lot of companies have this plan of what today is going to look like, and all the time there'll be something that drops at the last minute. A lot of systems don't route for that efficiently, and it becomes, ‘oh, let's use this extra emergency vehicle to go do that urgent thing’."
Fuel costs also rise as a byproduct of problems that started elsewhere.
“Idling, failed deliveries, reattempts. All these things tend to happen more when the end recipient isn't aware that the driver's coming," Helen says.
“Having better customer comms, having dynamic ETAs and notifications saying, ‘your driver's going to get there between 12 and 1, make sure you're there'; all those things can help improve your delivery rate and reduce that fuel usage."
Who owns fuel efficiency?
One reason fuel efficiency is as under-addressed as it is, Helen says, is that no one in a large fleet is specifically responsible for it.
“Historically in businesses, each of these functions [finance, operations, logistics, sustainability] can be quite siloed and they address the problem in their own way," Helen says.
“Ops just wants to get things done on time. As long as there's an acceptable level of inefficiency that fits within the budget, they're good to go. No one goes to ops and says, ‘hey, did you shave off five kilometres from yesterday?' It's not a question they get asked."
“Finance just wants the business to be successful financially. They want the costs to be predictable, whether that's through cheaper procurement or passing on surcharges. And sustainability, if it exists at all, wants to know about emissions reporting, but not necessarily about fuel efficiency. All of these are very tangential to the overall fuel efficiency question. There's no one particular person or team responsible for it."
That may be about to change.
The first Road Transport Contractual Chain Order (RTCCO) has just come into effect, which shifts some responsibility for fuel costs back up the chain and limits the degree to which operators can pass costs through as surcharges.
“I think that's just additional proof that passing on surcharges isn't the future," Helen says. “If you can control your costs instead, it's a much better long-term solution. I think we'll start seeing more companies with internal KPIs and teams focused on efficiency as a metric rather than individual functions that sort of touch it, but not exactly."
Start by measuring, not optimising
A surprising share of Australian fleets aren't digitised, Helen says. Many still send drivers out with a wad of papers. If that's you, step zero is graduating from the paper trail. For everyone else, a practical order of operations:
- Capture what's already in your dispatchers' heads: “It's so impressive how much knowledge can sit in one dispatcher's head," Helen says. “They're like: ‘I know this postcode is 45 minutes from this depot.' They just know everything." That intel is an asset, but only if it can be modelled into a system that survives the dispatcher's next annual leave or sick day.
- Establish a baseline: Whether its kilometres per delivery, litres per-vehicle per-week, failed delivery rate, reattempt rate. You can't improve what you can't see.
- Find the quiet leaks: From backhauls and ad hoc jobs, to idling and reattempts driven by poor customer comms. They don't show up as fuel problems, but they burn it anyway.
- Then optimise: When you can measure the baseline and name the leaks, optimisation has something to work with.
Step four is where the one-in-six are sitting.
Beyond fuel
Fuel is the story of 2026. It could also be the story of 2027. But it won’t be the only one. In supply chains, the only certainty is uncertainty.
But ‘uncertain’ and ‘uncontrollable’ aren’t the same thing. And control can be exerted across more factors than just fuel, from labour or vehicle shortages to weather events.
Take driver availability, for example. During COVID, the bottleneck was vehicles. Now those trucks sit in the yard and the shortage is behind the wheel.
Fleets winning on driver retention are often the same ones winning on fuel. More efficient routes mean less time lost, less friction in the day, more efficient work, and more reasons to stay in the job.
“Fortunately with drivers, there's a bit more control," Helen says.
“Look for ways to retain them through things like a driver app that's genuinely easy to use. Fewer clicks, removing friction points like asking drivers to stop and manually text an ETA to the next customer.”
Just as you can't stop fuel prices rising, you can't clone drivers, manufacture vehicles, or influence the weather. But you can control their impact.
One in six fleets already are. The five in six have a decision to make.
If this edition made you think about fuel costs, route optimisation, and exerting more control over your supply chain, subscribe and share it with a technology, logistics or ecommerce decision maker in your network.
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