The funny thing (or maybe the frustrating thing) about running a courier business today is you’ve never had more tools or tech available to you, and yet everything somehow feels more complicated than it used to.
On one hand, this avalanche of new, powerful tech has opened the door to huge opportunities. Routing is now much smarter, you have more visibility into your overall ops, and you can get updates as soon they happen. On the other hand, all that possibility comes with higher expectations and a lot more to stay on top of.
For a long time, courier companies coped by stitching together whatever tools they had lying around. This often included a mix of a legacy TMS, a few trusty spreadsheets, and the classic pen and paper.
It wasn’t perfect, but it worked… until it didn’t.
The more tools and trusty spreadsheets you layer on top of each other, the more convoluted everything becomes. Which brings us to where we are now, with many teams running what can only be described as a Frankenstein system (a.k.a. a stitched-together mishmash of all the above).
But those little workarounds that used to feel scrappy now feel… well, a bit brittle and very clunky.
Here, we dig into why courier companies are finally ditching the duct tape and moving toward a more neat, cohesive approach to last mile management.
What are Frankenstein systems in the last mile?
The problem established courier companies face is their data is all over the place. You might have key driver info stored in a workforce management tool, vehicle details tucked away in a separate fleet system, and proof of delivery handled by another app entirely. And then right in the middle of it all, you might have a Google Sheet that has been around as long as the company.
There’s nothing inherently “wrong” with this, but if these tools don’t talk to each other, you end up manually exporting and importing data over and over again.
Why do Frankenstein systems exist?
These workflows didn’t pop up out of nowhere.
They’re usually the result of courier companies doing what they’ve always done best: solving problems fast with whatever’s on hand. The quickest fix has usually always been the best fix, even if that means bolting on yet another tool. And so the Frankenstein system grows and mutates.
They’re a byproduct of something bigger
Megan Murphy, VP of Product at Spoke Dispatch, explains it through the lens of the broader tech cycle. Software naturally moves between bundling (where everything is under one “roof”) and unbundling (lots of smaller, specialized tools).
"The last mile market went through a wave of unbundling: routing tools, fleet tools, POD tools, notification tools, each doing one narrow job extremely well. Couriers mixed and matched whatever solved the immediate need, but that’s also why the ‘quilt’ keeps growing more tangled over time".
Megan Murphy
VP of Product, Spoke Dispatch
Personal preferences always come into play
Layer on top the inevitable pick-and-mix of personal preferences (e.g. one dispatcher loves Airtable but another swears by Sheets), and suddenly you’ve got an operation spread thin across many, many tools.
Legacy is incredibly persuasive
Many courier companies have been around for ten, fifteen, even twenty years. The systems they started out with are nowhere near robust enough to handle the sheer volume of deliveries today.
Instead of ripping everything out (a terrifying thought), they’ve kept adding on.
The tricky part is that for a long time, this way of doing things was completely reasonable. The tools were cheap, accessible, and honestly, “good enough”. If something didn’t work, you could fix it yourself.
Frankenstein systems absolutely had their time and place. They were a survival strategy that allowed courier companies to flex and flow with the times. But, as with most things, the cracks are starting to show now they’re under severe pressure from bloated delivery schedules and sky-high consumer expectations.
The human factor: why change takes time
Resistance to change isn’t a courier-specific problem, it’s a human problem. It just so happens that resistance shows up more overtly in ops built predominantly around routine and muscle memory.
Drivers (especially experienced ones) are a great example of this.
They’ve usually spent years memorizing every shortcut and tricky route, so when you hand them a new tool they push back with the classic line Megan sees all the time: “No, I don’t need an app. I know this area. No app is going to help me know it better.”
And, honestly, can you blame them? They’re good at their jobs and the old way worked, so of course they’re hesitant to change things.
But this is precisely why vertical SaaS tools take longer to adopt. Courier ops run on deeply ingrained habits and processes (sometimes ones that are decades old). We’re not talking about early-adopters keen to jump on every tool here. These are pragmatic operators who might have been burned by clunky software in the past.
Megan puts it perfectly:
“It’s becoming harder to differentiate between software that’s trying to help you do your job better versus software that’s trying to replace you.”
And that fear is real. When people don’t understand the purpose of a tool, their default move is to be cautious and stick to what they know.
However. People are far more likely to stop resisting something as soon as the pain outweighs the comfort. So, it’s only when things are moving so slowly and money is circling the drain that change suddenly becomes less scary.
The tipping point happens when it becomes impossible for dispatchers to carry on juggling clunky, tired old systems.
A lot of courier companies are reaching the same crossroads and realizing they don’t actually need more tools, they need one system that finally brings everything together. That’s exactly the gap Spoke Dispatch was built to fill: a purpose-built, last mile management command center that supports the way couriers already work instead of forcing a brand-new playbook on them.
Where the tipping point really happens
Most (if not every) courier companies have that moment where they realize things could be far more efficient if they just sucked it up and redesigned their tech stack. Usually, it’s not a dramatic epiphany, but more of a slow, creeping realization that becomes too hard to ignore.
Megan shared a great example of this in action with a European courier. On paper, their setup looked fine. They had about 15 drivers and used Spoke Dispatch for routing. Everything technically “worked”... but there was one big gap that was growing by the day.
The company delivers large goods, which means vehicle capacity is a big deal. They can’t go over the payload limit because it becomes a legal issue. Their existing tools just couldn’t handle capacity management the way they needed, so the team had built their own Frankenstein-style workaround: manually copying Spoke’s optimized routes into a spreadsheet every single day to re-check weight and volume.
This workaround took three hours a day.
Let’s do the math here. Three hours a day, five days a week, with 15 drivers. That’s more than 750 hours a year spent copy-pasting data. At this point, it’s gone beyond being a time sink and is basically the cost of a full-time salary.
This is what the tipping point often looks like.
But the cost isn’t always just time:
- It’s missed opportunities because you’re stuck fixing things instead of talking to new clients.
- It’s lost visibility because you have info spread across too many disconnected places.
- It’s missed SLAs because the manual steps you have to do cause delays and errors.
- It’s a damaged reputation because you can’t give retailers the visibility and confidence that other couriers can.
- It's the risk, of either the legal, operational, or financial kind.
What’s even more interesting is that most courier companies don’t realize how much time they’re losing. As Megan put it, the inefficiencies are “less quantifiable than we’d like.” Teams just feel the drag.
So, there’s not really a “specific moment” when courier companies flip the switch. Instead, it varies from team to team depending on what part of their business seems to be haemorrhaging time or money.
The build-your-own illusion
For a lot of courier companies, the instinct to build their own system comes from the same scrappy creativity that’s helped them survive for years. They see a problem and want to solve it ASAP.
The problem is, they underestimate the maintenance costs and the human side of things. Basically, people want to use products that evolve and get better as they use them.
One of the most illuminating examples Megan shared was from a Chilean courier company.
This was an incredibly sharp, process-driven company that was genuinely ahead of the curve in how they ran their ops. They’d mapped out every single workflow in these beautiful, detailed flowcharts (think little decision trees for every possible scenario a dispatcher might face in a day). It was thorough and it was… a lot.
Naturally, given they had development experience themselves, they decided to build their own system around these flows, which in theory made perfect sense. Why not turn their way of working into a software that fits them perfectly?
But a lot of courier companies get caught in the build-your-own trap. Basically, you think that because you understand your workflows inside out, building your own system will give you exactly what you need.
But the reality isn’t quite as simple.
Courier companies aren’t software companies
They’re brilliant at logistics and routing and all that good stuff, but building software and shipping weekly updates is a whole other ball game. And, as Megan points out, it’s one most courier companies don’t have the time (or resources or structure) to take on.
It’s a constant game of catch-up
Software needs updating, it needs bugs fixing, and so on. It’s a lot to stay on top of, whereas dedicated last-mile platforms automatically push out improvements every week. Even if a courier does manage to build something half decent, they’re already 18 months behind by the time it’s finished.
Internal tools often mirror internal thinking
There’s a lot of steps and a lot of nuance, which drivers don’t really want or need. They just want something that works at the side of the road when their hands are freezing and they’re behind schedule.
“I wouldn’t say it’s the upfront cost that deters them. It’s the ongoing costs that then deter them,” says Ryan Thurgood, Sales Lead for Spoke Dispatch.
“Some courier company leads I speak to will say we built our own route optimization tool 15 years ago, but at this point, we might as well be using just pen and paper because there’s no one to maintain the upkeep of the technology.”
Ryan Thurgood
Sales lead at Spoke Dispatch
So, yes, building your own proprietary software sounds like a good idea, but the reality is not quite what it’s cracked up to be.
How founder mindset is changing
The interesting thing Megan’s seeing (and what’s becoming clearer across the whole industry) is that a new generation of courier founders is approaching tech very differently. They’re more curious than the operators of 10 to 15 years ago and are far less defensive about bringing software into the heart of their operation.
For them, software is an advantage rather than a threat.
They’re not trying to prove they can do everything manually. That’s not the flex it used to be. Instead, they’re trying to build companies that actually grow.
Megan says these are the kind of couriers she wants to work with. They’re “tech-literate, understand their business deeply, and know when to ask for help.” And there’s flickers of this kind of courier out there. “We’re seeing signals of this mindset,” says Megan. “Couriers willing to use technology strategically, but not yet enough to call it a full pattern.”
This is good news for courier companies and a pivotal moment for the industry. Dispatchers that start moving towards a unified, full-stack system rather than the piecemeal workflows they’ve been moulding for years will give themselves a competitive advantage.
And this is the real payoff here.
Consolidating around a single platform that can do the work of all the bitty tools of before is a massive benefit because you no longer have to juggle data in many different places or export fresh spreadsheets at nine every morning.
The myth of losing flexibility
One of the biggest misconceptions courier teams have about switching to a unified system is the fear that it’ll box them in. They think they’ll no longer be able to move quickly or improvise, but the reality is actually the complete opposite.
“I think about the use case where a courier uses one system for delivery notifications, another for collecting proof of delivery, and another for calculating and creating routes. When they move away from that setup, what they gain is a cohesive experience, they can finally see every part of the process in one place.”
Megan Murphy
, VP of product, Spoke Dispatch
So, really, modern last mile management software gives dispatchers more freedom because it gives them more control. Rather than chasing issues like they’ve done for years, they can see them coming.
“When you create a route in Spoke Dispatch, you can immediately see whether notifications are set up and ready to send, and you can check what kind of proof of delivery is required for each stop,” she says. “Having everything centralized gives you visibility you didn’t have before.”
This is where Megan’s concept of policies comes in (a.k.a. rules that guide what you do without actually locking you in). With these policies, you can set:
- Depot-level defaults, like start times, break rules, routing preferences, shift structures, etc.
- Driver-level overrides, including experience, speed, vehicle type, capacity, etc.
- Route-level flexibility, like auto-assigning stops by delivery zone, fixing incorrect addresses, bulk-editing or reassigning stops, applying custom route rules, and avoiding toll roads to control margins.
The beauty of having an all-inclusive last mile management software is you can override anything in the moment. If a van breaks down or a client suddenly needs something delivered by noon, you can just update the relevant policy or tweak the route slightly and the software recalculates everything.
If you’re at a point where your last mile technology isn't giving you the control and flexibility you need, give Spoke Dispatch a try for free.
The new reality of last mile management
There’s something else happening in the industry right now too. In the past, last -mile software was predominantly geared towards couriers and only couriers. Retail clients and end customers were treated as separate audiences with unrelated needs. But today, those lines are getting blurrier.
When you put it under a microscope, you can see that the needs of all three parties involved in the delivery process are not worlds apart. Retailers want to see what’s happening in the moment, customers want accurate ETAs, and couriers want fewer calls asking where drivers are.
Modern last mile management sits right in the middle of all three and connects the entire chain instead of isolating each link. It creates a kind of ecosystem.
This shift is important because it’s changing the expectations of everyone involved. Adopting one platform that handles everything also gives everyone what they want and need (e.g. retail customers can clearly see their orders, end-customers get a slicker experience, drivers have a workflow that doesn’t make them want to throw their phone out the window).
Patchwork systems just aren't sustainable anymore
At the end of the day, the real reason courier companies are finally ditching their Frankenstein systems isn’t just to save money. The deeper motivation is far more human: they want control back.
For years, fragmentation was a survival strategy and courier teams did whatever they had to do to keep the wheels turning, even if that meant stitching together a mishmash of tools.
Now the stakes are too high and the margins are too tight for makeshift systems. Retailers expect real-time visibility into their deliveries, customers expect accurate ETAs, and drivers expect tools that create high quality routes.
And while some courier companies are still juggling data across five platforms, others are investing in dedicated last mile management software. This is the new kind of survival. Using tech to run a sharper, more reliable operation (not just a cheaper one).
Being the lowest-cost courier isn’t a sustainable competitive advantage anymore, it’s a race to the bottom. Things like transparency, visibility, clear performance data, and better delivery success rates are what win contracts today. And modern last mile management platforms are strengthening the entire delivery chain.
“The future of last mile management isn’t just making the courier’s job easier, it’s creating value across the entire chain,” says Megan.
