🚛 For some logistics operators, the depot is the first stop on a long journey. For others, it is the safe harbour that keeps the entire operation running.
🛣️ The first group is familiar to almost everyone, because we see them every day on the motorway: international haulers, fixed routes, predictable schedules. The depot is the starting point, everything else happens along the way. For them, charging is a corridor question.
🚧 The second group is far less visible. Yet they are enormously important. Some call them the „wild“ logistics operators. In the morning with a tipper to a construction site, in the afternoon hauling machine parts on a flatbed through the countryside. Different every day, never the same twice.
The Truck changes jobs multiple times a day. Charging along the road? Rarely necessary. The distances are short enough. But the depot has to deliver every midday and every evening, reliably, completely, without excuses. 100% charge in the morning is not a nice-to-have, it is a requirement.
📍 For these operators, the depot is not just one charging location among many. It is the operational foundation. And because they could often charge where they load or unload, at the customer’s site, on a yard, at a construction site, charging for them is Destination Charging in its purest form. Few people call it that, and even fewer plan for it that way.
💡 The answer is not roadside charging. It is the depot. And the depot does not have to mean only your own yard. The real challenge lies in balancing grid connection, battery storage, energy costs and utilisation, without limiting your own fleet. Add to that the question of how to handle billing and access management. And when it comes to optimising utilisation for better economics, that is usually where the support runs out.
🔌 When I look at depots, I notice something. Certain charging infrastructure brands appear again and again. Others almost never. I wonder why. Is it price? Integration? Trust? Or simply because nobody explained what works for what?
🏗️ Solutions like eTrucker or Depotcharge help operators find charging locations and manage billing. ASTAG is trying a P2P approach, sharing infrastructure rather than building it alone. Good ideas. But who helps with building the depot itself? With sizing the connection, choosing the right storage, planning load management?
Many smaller operators feel completely on their own with these questions, regardless of what they are being presented with. That is what I keep hearing in conversations.
If you recognise this or have experienced it differently: I am listening.
