Trusk Seeks to Reconcile Fast Delivery with Environmental Impact

Delivery within an hour or by appointment? Without having to take a day off? Even for a sofa or washing machine? While minimizing its carbon footprint as much as possible? Trusk, a last-mile delivery specialist for bulky parcels, was founded in 2016 to address these challenges. Initially, the company offered affordable moving services to individuals. “One day, we provided this service for someone who also happened to be Leroy Merlin’s innovation director…, recalls Sarah Gimenez, CEO of Trusk. Pleased with the service, she suggested rolling out this offering to her customers. After a trial at the Montigny-sur-Orge store, Trusk as we know it today was launched.” Ten years later, following several fundraising rounds, this freight forwarder handles more than one million deliveries on behalf of major home improvement, furniture, appliance and construction retailers.

Of these one million deliveries, 30% come from “traditional” retail and 70% from e-commerce. Accordingly, two types of flows are used: goods are either collected from stores and delivered directly to the customer, or delivered by the retailer to one of Trusk’s three warehouses. In the latter case, orders are consolidated and then sequenced after scheduling an appointment with the customer. Routes are subsequently organized using an in-house WMS and TMS. “We leased our first two warehouses in 2020, when e-commerce demand became greater than demand originating from stores,” explains the CEO. Trusk opened a third warehouse in the PACA region in 2022. “The aim is indeed to progressively cover the entire country, Sarah Gimenez confirms. We would need around ten more, likely with a central hub, but we are moving forward pragmatically.” Trusk reports annual growth of 15%.

This development is largely due to the organization of the various flows. Optimizing collection and delivery routes, wherever the goods to be delivered are located, with the highest possible fill rate, as well as managing returns to avoid empty journeys to stores or reuse centers, also helps limit the carbon impact of transport operations. “Let’s be honest: we are polluters,” stated Thomas Effantin, president and co-founder, at a conference at Sibca (the Low-Carbon Real Estate Trade Show) last September. For this reason, from the company’s founding and its first contracts with committed customers, Trusk invested in electrifying its vehicle fleet.

“At the time, electric vehicles were still rarely used for deliveries, particularly because of their cost and limited range. This did not encourage carriers to invest,” explains Sarah Gimenez. “To ensure our deliveries would be made with ‘clean’ trucks, we created a subsidiary in 2020 to acquire electric vehicles that we could offer to our service providers on long-term leases.” The market has since developed, with ranges of up to 350 kilometers and prices that are more accessible than 10 years ago. “Our carriers are increasingly taking matters into their own hands and leasing less from this subsidiary, even though it still exists,” notes the CEO. Today, 50% of deliveries operated by Trusk are electric, and 100% in the Île-de-France region. “We electrify whenever possible, but an economic balance must be found, along with customers willing to share this investment with us.”

Finding warehouses aligned with these environmental concerns is also a priority for management. “But we also have operational constraints. First and foremost, we must choose these sites based on their geographic location and configuration,” Sarah Gimenez points out. “They must be close to cities and have plenty of loading docks, as we may need to organize more than 50 truck departures within two hours.”