Net zero has moved from a corporate responsibility statement into the operational and commercial detail of running a logistics function. That shift is changing what businesses need from the people leading it, and it is happening faster than most job specifications have caught up with.
Why logistics carries a disproportionate share of the problem
Heavy goods vehicles account for roughly 6% of vehicle miles travelled in the UK but produce around 21% of all road transport greenhouse gas emissions, according to Department for Transport figures. That imbalance is why freight attracts so much policy attention, and why the sale of new diesel trucks under 26 tonnes is already scheduled to end in 2035.
The transition is genuinely underway. Wincanton has taken delivery of electric trucks capable of running above 40 tonnes, expected to cut around 2,400 tonnes of CO2 annually. Royal Mail has put 42-tonne electric DAF units onto middle-mile routes. Public charging hubs for electric HGVs have started to open through the Electric Freightway programme, backed by the Zero Emission HGV and Infrastructure Demonstrator scheme.
But the sector genuinely does not agree on how to get there
This is the part that matters most for hiring. The HGV Decarbonisation Report from the Commercial Vehicle Show, based on responses from 61 UK fleet operators, found a divided market with no clear consensus on the most viable route to net zero. Battery electric, hydrogen and low-carbon fuels such as HVO all have advocates. Grid capacity, vehicle availability, planning timescales and unclear whole-life costs all remain live constraints.
That has a direct consequence. You are not hiring someone who knows the correct answer, because the sector has not settled on one. You are hiring someone who can make defensible capital and operational decisions while the answer is still moving, and who can explain those decisions to a board that wants certainty nobody can currently offer.
The packaging connection most briefs miss entirely
Here is where it gets more interesting, and where two disciplines that used to sit apart have started to converge.
The UK’s revised packaging extended producer responsibility scheme began in April 2025, requiring producers to cover the full cost of managing household packaging waste. Crucially, the fees are calculated by weight. In the first year, producers paid flat base fees per tonne, with plastic set at £423 per tonne and glass at £192.
From 2026 those fees became modulated by recyclability, using a red, amber and green rating. Government guidance confirms the escalation: red-rated packaging pays 1.2 times the base fee in 2026-27, rising to 1.6 times the following year and 2.0 times by 2028-29.
Now consider what packaging weight does to a logistics operation. It determines how many units fit on a pallet and how many pallets fit on a vehicle. It drives fuel burn and therefore emissions. And it now carries a direct, escalating per-tonne cost of its own.
Three separate pressures, all pointing the same way, all landing on decisions that used to be made in isolation. A packaging change made purely for EPR reasons alters vehicle fill and transport cost. A network decision made purely on transport cost misses the packaging fee implication. The businesses handling this well are the ones where logistics leadership is genuinely in that conversation rather than receiving the outcome of it.
What this actually changes about the roles
Carbon reporting has moved into logistics leadership rather than sitting solely with a sustainability function. Where a business has scope 3 commitments, transport is frequently the largest single contributor, and the person who owns transport increasingly owns the number.
Fleet transition decisions now carry genuine capital weight. Choosing between battery electric, HVO and staying with diesel for another replacement cycle is a multi-year financial commitment made against uncertain infrastructure and residual values. That is a different kind of decision to specifying a replacement diesel fleet.
Network design has picked up an extra variable. Consolidation, backhaul, fill rate and modal shift were always efficiency questions. They are now emissions questions with reporting consequences attached. And the packaging conversation, as above, is no longer somebody else’s department.
How this plays out across the career ladder
At Transport Manager and Logistics Manager level, this mostly shows up as operational fluency: understanding what an electric vehicle does to route planning and shift patterns, what HVO costs and delivers, and how fill rate improvements translate into reported emissions.
At Head of Logistics and Logistics Director level it becomes a strategy and investment question. These are the people making the fleet transition call, defending it to a finance director, and standing behind an emissions trajectory the business has published. Head of logistics recruitment increasingly turns on whether a candidate can hold that conversation credibly rather than defer it.
The Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport has built sustainability and decarbonisation into its professional development and qualification content, which is a reasonable indicator of engagement, though a long way from a guarantee that someone has actually made these decisions in practice.
What to look for when you’re hiring
Ask what they have actually done rather than what they know. Has this candidate specified, trialled or operated alternative fuel vehicles, and what did they learn that the business case did not predict? Have they built a carbon baseline for a transport operation, and do they understand where the data is weak? Have they had to defend a decarbonisation investment internally against a straightforward cost comparison that made diesel look cheaper?
Be honest in the brief about where your business genuinely is. A candidate who has led a fleet transition will be frustrated in an organisation that wants the credentials without the investment appetite, and someone hired to maintain a diesel operation will struggle if the board expects a transition plan within a year. That mismatch is one of the more avoidable reasons a senior logistics hire goes wrong.
As a specialist logistics recruiter, this is exactly the ground we cover before a search starts, whether the role is logistics manager recruitment at site level or a Head of Logistics appointment with a published emissions target attached to it.
If you’re hiring for a logistics or transport role where decarbonisation is part of the remit, get in touch for a confidential, no-obligation conversation about logistics recruitment. We aim to respond to all enquiries within one hour.
Cambridge Talent Partnership provides logistics recruitment and transport recruitment across the South of the UK, including London, Bristol, Oxford, Basingstoke and Crawley, as well as further afield for the right role. Wherever your vacancy sits, our approach stays the same: proactive search, genuine sector understanding, and candidates who can make defensible decisions in a market that hasn’t finished deciding.
