82% of Italian road haulage companies have fewer than 5 vehicles. It’s the structural data point explaining why the “pure” internal fleet is in fact an exception: in capillary distribution for grocery retail, agrifood, auto parts, building materials and pharma, the rule is a mixed fleet — a core of internal vehicles for high-volume routes and strategic clients, integrated with owner-operators and third-party hauliers absorbing seasonal peaks, covering secondary zones or handling special missions.
On paper it’s an elegant solution: utilisation of own vehicles is maximised, variability is offloaded externally, you only pay when needed. In daily practice it’s one of the areas where we most often see margin loss, customer disputes and tensions with drivers. The reason is almost always the same: planning and control stop at the internal fleet, while owner-operators are managed in another “box” — phone, email, spreadsheet — without the same visibility.
This article lines up the main contractual models for the relationship with owner-operators and third-party hauliers, the concrete operational challenges of mixed management, the technological solutions today accessible to SMEs, and a real case from our clients.
Three contractual models, three different operational mechanics
The phrase “owner-operator” covers very different legal realities, each with specific operational implications.
Owner-operator with own third-party licence — autonomous entity registered with the National Register of Hauliers, invoices the transport service. The principal pays the trip (or the day) and has no direct responsibility for the vehicle or driver. It’s the most common model in grocery retail and agrifood for absorbing peaks: 1-3 “fixed” owner-operators working almost exclusively for one principal, integrated by a network of occasional ones for seasonal peaks.
Structured third-party haulier — multi-vehicle haulage company with own drivers. Typically involved in subcontracting for specific missions (long-haul, regional distribution, port containers). The relationship is less vertical than the fixed owner-operator but more formalised.
Associated own-account transport — model widespread in agriculture and consortia: the associated company owns the vehicle, the driver is employee or member, transport is formally “own-account” of the consortium. Specific tax and social security implications.
For each model, who manages the risk changes, who pays fines for violations, who is responsible for transported goods, and how the cost per mission is calculated. The first operational decision of a mixed fleet is therefore to map precisely the contractual model of every external carrier and apply the right processes to each.
The four operational challenges of the mixed fleet
Regardless of the contractual model, there are four points where the mixed fleet loses the most value if not managed with discipline.
Challenge 1 — Real-time visibility
On own vehicles the fleet manager typically has installed telematics, access to position data, consumption, driver behaviour. On owner-operators, visibility often stops at “I’ll call you to know where you are”. This asymmetry generates two problems: you can’t answer the customer asking for an updated ETA on their delivery, and you can’t intervene in real-time on a delay becoming critical.
The technical solution today is scalable: owner-operators increasingly accept installing a tracking app on their smartphone (5-10 minutes onboarding, no hardware required), sharing vehicle position during service hours for that principal and turning off out of hours. Data ownership stays with the owner-operator; the principal sees only position during accepted missions. This model is now standard in Italian grocery retail.
Challenge 2 — Integrated planning
A dispatcher planning routes only for internal vehicles and then “pushing” the rest to owner-operators by phone is the model that works least. Typical inefficiencies: owner-operators receive the worst loads (low margin for the principal but still costs), internal vehicles under-used in zones where an owner-operator would be more efficient, route overlaps between internal vehicles and owner-operators on the same zone.
The right model is integrated planning on a single data foundation that sees own vehicles and available owner-operators together, and optimises considering different costs (cost per km differs between internal and owner-operators), different constraints (owner-operator availability hours), different competence areas. A modern VRP system natively manages this heterogeneity — it’s one of the substantial differences from the Excel planning most Italian SMEs still use.
Challenge 3 — Documentation, POD and invoicing
On internal vehicles digital proof of delivery is often integrated with the company TMS; on owner-operators, at best, the paper document returns to the company at the end of the route. This gap has three consequences: longer billing times (higher DSO), more frequent disputes on deliveries made but not documented, difficulty providing the customer with proof in real-time.
The owner-operator app with integrated digital POD — signature, photo, receipt printing — closes the gap without asking the owner-operator to change tools. The data flows automatically into the same system where own-vehicle PODs arrive, allowing fast invoicing and uniform handling of disputes.
Challenge 4 — Compliance and responsibility
The principal is not responsible for the owner-operator’s tachograph, but is responsible (and sanctionable) for compliance with driving and rest time regulations if they imposed shifts or rhythms leading the owner-operator to violate them. Italian case law is explicit: planning making it impossible to respect breaks is attributable to the principal.
Likewise, checks on vehicle registration, insurance, Hauliers’ Register certificate, ATP suitability for refrigerated vehicles, must be done and kept up to date. For a network of 5-10 fixed owner-operators it’s manageable manually; above 10 external carriers a structured system is needed — even just a centralised sheet with deadlines and alerts, but ideally integrated in the TMS.
When owner-operators are worth it (and when not)
The strategic question is not “owner-operators yes or no” but “what’s the optimal mix between internal and external for my business”. Three decision criteria.
Demand variability: if seasonal peaks are above 40% over baseline (typical in summer agrifood, pre-festive grocery, e-commerce Black Friday/Christmas), having an internal fleet sized on peaks means leaving vehicles idle 8-9 months a year. Owner-operators as “flexibility buffer” always pay off in this case.
Mission geography: in secondary or non-strategic zones, where volumes don’t justify a dedicated vehicle, the local owner-operator is almost always more efficient than a long route from a central depot. Territory knowledge, contacts with consignees, reduction of empty kilometres.
Client segment marginality: for high-strategic-value clients (volume, marginality, required service level) the own vehicle gives more control over quality, principal brand image, dispute handling. The owner-operator is preferable where commodity prevails and margin is thin.
The common error is going to the extremes: either “all internal” — with high fixed costs and under-utilised vehicles — or “all owner-operators”, with loss of control over quality. The optimal mix for many Italian capillary distribution realities is 60-70% internal + 30-40% external, with the external share concentrated on secondary zones and seasonal peaks.
A real case: a southern Italian grocery wholesaler
Among our clients, a grocery wholesaler active in southern Italy manages weekly distribution to regional retail with a model almost entirely based on owner-operators. The operating fleet runs around 25 “fixed” external carriers — owner-operators working almost exclusively for the wholesaler — plus a network of occasional ones activated in peaks (summer for fresh products, eve of festive periods).
The three main challenges at the time of Optivo introduction were typical of this model: planning on Excel + phone calls (dedicated dispatcher 6-8 hours/day just coordinating departures), no real-time visibility on owner-operators on the road (ETA to customer impossible), paper PODs returning to the company with 3-5 days delay, lengthening invoicing.
Introducing integrated planning that sees all carriers together (internal + owner-operators) and a driver app for owner-operators too produced, in the first four months, three measurable effects. First, dispatcher time dropped to 1-2 hours/day (planning is automated, the dispatcher only handles exceptions). Second, the average POD return time went from 3-5 days to real-time, accelerating invoicing by a full week. Third, owner-operator utilisation became more balanced — automated planning distributed loads across more carriers instead of concentrating them on dispatcher “favourites”, reducing tension on the network and improving availability in peaks.
The technology that makes the difference
Three technological components are today the minimum for seriously managing a mixed fleet in a capillary distribution company.
Single planner internal + external. The VRP system must treat owner-operators and own vehicles as “resources” of the same planning, with their specific constraints (hours, areas, cost, capacity). Planning that optimises separately for the two groups is, by definition, sub-optimal.
Universal driver app. Drivers of own vehicles and owner-operators use the same app to receive missions, navigate, register POD, communicate anomalies. The owner-operator doesn’t want to install 5 different apps for 5 principals; one app that works for all their clients — because based on industry standards — is instead acceptable.
Unified control dashboard. The fleet manager sees in a single dashboard all carriers on the road, updated ETAs, alerts on missions at risk. The internal/external distinction serves for economic KPIs, but operationally it’s a single view. Among the 7 KPIs to monitor in a fleet, the utilisation rate must be calculated both overall and separated by capacity source (internal vs external), to identify structural imbalances.
The key point
The myth to bust is that the mixed fleet is an operational compromise: it is only if managed as the sum of two separate fleets. Treated as a single heterogeneous resource, with the same visibility and the same tools for all carriers, it becomes the most flexible and marginally most profitable model for most Italian capillary distribution SMEs.
The crucial operational point is information symmetry: the owner-operator and the internal driver must work with the same tools and give the principal the same data quality. When this symmetry is in place, the internal/external distinction becomes a cost variable in planning, not a separate world.
If you want to understand the optimal internal/external mix for your business and which tools are needed to manage it well, talk to our team: an analysis of your annual workload is enough to identify inefficiencies in the current model and quantify the improvement potential.