Our logistics and transport page covers your own footprint: fleet fuel, depots, refrigeration and subcontractors. This post is about the other question hauliers now get: "what were the emissions of moving our goods?"
Why customers ask
Your fuel is your Scope 1. For the customer paying you, the same emissions are their Scope 3: category 4 if they buy the transport, category 9 if their own customer pays for delivery. A PPN 006 Carbon Reduction Plan must include both, so any customer bidding for central government work needs a number for the freight they use. If you don't give them one, they will multiply tonnes and distance by the government's average HGV factor, which may make you look better or worse than you are.
The method in four steps
- Total your fleet's emissions for the period from the litres on fuel cards and bunkered fuel. Include refrigeration unit fuel only for chilled work (see below).
- Total the tonne-km you delivered: for each job, tonnes carried × distance carried, added up. Use the same distance basis every time, either the actual route from telematics or a mapping distance, and say which.
- Divide one by the other to get your intensity in kg CO2e per tonne-km.
- Multiply each customer's tonne-km by that intensity.
This is physical allocation, which the GHG Protocol's Scope 3 standard prefers when a physical measure reflects what causes the emissions. Weight and distance do that well for freight. If your loads are bulky and light, so vehicles fill up by volume before weight, say so and consider a volume-based measure instead.
A worked example
A haulier's own HGVs burn 400,000 litres of diesel in a year and deliver 12,000,000 tonne-km. One customer sends 900 tonnes an average of 150 km, which is 135,000 tonne-km.
| Fuel burned only | Including producing the fuel | |
|---|---|---|
| Fleet emissions | 1,033.42 t | 1,277.82 t |
| Intensity, g CO2e per tonne-km | 86.1 | 106.5 |
| This customer's share | 11.63 t | 14.38 t |
The left column is your Scope 1 fuel. The right adds the "well-to-tank" emissions of extracting, refining and delivering the diesel, which the government publishes as separate factors. State which you are giving; customers following ISO 14083 or the GLEC Framework will want to know. Had the customer used the government's average HGV factor instead, they would have reported 13.98 tonnes for the same work.
Chilled loads and subcontracted legs
- Refrigerated work burns extra fuel in the fridge unit and leaks refrigerant. Work out a separate intensity for chilled vehicles so ambient customers don't carry it. The government's averages show the gap: 0.12122 kg CO2e per tonne-km for a refrigerated HGV against 0.10356 for a standard one in 2026.
- Subcontracted legs are your Scope 3, not your Scope 1, but they are still part of moving the customer's goods. Add them to what you report to that customer, using the subcontractor's own figure or the government factor for the vehicle type.
Reporting it
Send customers their tonne-km and kg CO2e per month or per quarter, with one line on method: fuel-based, which distances, whether upstream fuel emissions are included, and the factor year. Your intensity also makes a good headline figure for your own reports; our post on intensity ratios explains how to pick one. And as your fleet changes, the same calculation shows customers the effect: every litre of diesel saved is 2.58354 kg CO2e less in their Scope 3 as well as your Scope 1.
How Carbon Recycling helps
Import fuel card exports by CSV and Carbon Recycling turns them into your Scope 1 with the right year's DESNZ factor, keeps the well-to-tank part separate in Scope 3 category 3 (a setting that is on by default), and adds refrigerant top-ups and depot energy for your Carbon Reduction Plan and SECR report. The fleet totals are the top half of the tonne-km sum above. When a customer that uses Carbon Recycling asks you for figures, you answer through a secure link with no account, giving your figure and a short note on method. For answering longer questionnaires, see our post on answering customer carbon questionnaires.