The unbundling of the last mile is not what you think
Everyone talks about unbundling logistics. The actual shift happening in last-mile delivery is the opposite of what most analyst decks describe.
The story everyone tells about last-mile delivery is that it’s “unbundling” — separating into specialist providers for each leg, each customer segment, each delivery window. The decks make a lot of sense. The reality is the opposite.
What we see in the data
Across the Dispatch network, the customers that grew fastest in 2025 consolidated more of their delivery stack onto a single platform, not less. The reason is straightforward: every additional vendor adds an integration tax, a reconciliation tax, and a data-loss tax. By the time you have four routing engines, you’re not optimizing — you’re refereeing.
The actual unbundling
Where unbundling does happen is at the capability layer: predictive ETA, exception triage, demand forecasting, route optimization. These used to come bolted into vertical TMS suites. Now they’re modular. Operators pick the engine they need and plug it into a single orchestrator.
That’s the shift. Not five vendors per shipment. One orchestrator, with the best-in-class capability for each problem.
What this means for buyers
If your RFP is structured around per-vendor scope, you’re optimizing for the wrong thing. The question isn’t who handles same-day delivery — it’s who owns the orchestration layer that decides when same-day is the right answer.