Leader of the pack

Increasing pressure from regulators and customers to decarbonise deliveries in London has led to a number of zero-carbon final-mile startups. Steve Hobson spoke to Tristan Thomas, the CEO and co-founder of Packfleet

Packfleet was set up in 2021 by three former employees of online bank Monzo – Tristan Thomas, Hugo Cornejo and Josh Garnham – since when it’s grown to a team of over 100 and now delivers for more than 200 businesses across London from its hub in Bermondsey, south-east London.

It recently raised £8m seed funding from leading investors including Creandum – an early backer of Spotify – and General Catalyst, which helped fund Airbnb and got Deliveroo off the ground. With such illustrious partners it’s perhaps no surprise the firm has plans to add a second London depot and expand beyond the M25.

“Packfleet was founded by myself and two other ex-employees of Monzo,” says Thomas. “We spent five years there building an alternative to traditional banks and we are now trying to do the same in logistics.

“It began in lockdown. I started a wine subscription hobby project and through that got a view into the world of logistics for the first time. I felt that it was lacking and the customer-centricity was pretty poor – parcels were arriving broken or delivered to the wrong address over and over again.

“So we set out to see if we could improve on this with a combination of technology and hiring really good people.”

Live and direct Packfleet has developed its own routing and scheduling software that can predict delivery times within a minute. Customers can change their delivery address or the time the parcel arrives while the parcel is out for delivery, as routes are updated in real time.

And rather than rely on the gig economy, Packfleet’s drivers are directly employed and receive all the usual associated benefits, including parental leave and private health insurance. They are encouraged to engage with consumers rather than make their deliveries as quickly as possible.

“We own or lease all of the vehicles and employ all of our drivers directly,” says Thomas. “That enables us to build a business that is reliable and repeatable without having to rely on outsourcing.”

This has also helped Packfleet to recruit a younger and more diverse workforce than most logistics firms.

“We are a company that is attractive to work for compared with the alternatives,” says Thomas. “Electric vehicles are easier to drive for people with less experience and we have far more female drivers than the ➜