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In many industries, renting textiles has long been established as a convenient alternative to the “do-it-yourself” approach. A specialised service provider supplies customers with professionally processed workwear and protective clothing, hotel linen and hospital textiles, mats and mops in return for a monthly rental fee. The service generally also includes a delivery operation, exchanging soiled rental textiles for clean ones. Depending on the country, similar services are also available to private customers. For example, people in India or the USA who do not wish to take care of their personal laundry can delegate this task to a laundry or dry-cleaning chain – including collection and delivery. Customers schedule, pay for and track the status of their items via an app. However, with endless traffic jams in megacities and overcrowded motorways, delays are always a possibility. Commercial customers – especially those located in city centres – can no longer freely decide when their laundry should arrive either: traffic-calmed and low-emission zones impose access restrictions on delivery vehicles, and violations may result in fines.
Laundry deliveries on two wheels avoid traffic jams
The growing bottlenecks in road traffic are forcing textile service providers to explore new ways of delivering goods to their customers. In Asia, for example, transport by waterways is common, but bicycles, mopeds, rickshaws, tuk-tuks and even handcarts are also widely used. Their key advantage is flexibility: drivers with local knowledge can use narrow streets inaccessible to larger vehicles and thereby avoid congestion. However, load capacity is limited – even though some transport operators manage to increase cargo volume with rather adventurous constructions.
This small-scale delivery model has now also gained traction in Europe. Parcel delivery companies are no longer the only businesses using electric cargo bikes to access traffic-restricted city centres. Some textile service providers have also experimented with the concept. To make it economically viable, the vehicles need to carry at least the equivalent of two laundry containers, or around 200 kg. This requirement is by no means unrealistic – modern commercial e-cargo bikes can transport up to 300 kg. However, the heavier the load, the shorter the range. To ensure that riders do not run out of power halfway through a route, the use of such alternative transport solutions depends heavily on precise route planning.
Battery-electric vehicles for delivery operations
The load capacities of cargo bikes are insufficient for the volumes of laundry handled by large hotels or companies with many employees. When tonnes of textiles need to be transported, lorries remain indispensable. Vehicles powered by combustion engines are highly flexible, can be refuelled quickly, offer a long service life, high payload capacity and extensive range. However, these heavy goods vehicles contribute significantly to greenhouse gas emissions: according to the German Environment Agency, the average emissions of the widely used 3.5 to 7.5-tonne vehicles in textile rental services amount to 561 g of CO₂ equivalent per 1,000 tonne-kilometres. This figure directly impacts the Scope 1 emissions of textile service providers. To improve their carbon footprint while also reducing toll and infrastructure charges levied in various European countries, companies are increasingly investing in battery-electric lorries. Depending on the manufacturer, these vehicles are equipped with battery capacities ranging from 300 to 600 kilowatt-hours and offer ranges between 250 and 500 km. This is sufficient for a typical delivery route. However, if an electric vehicle runs out of power, complications quickly arise: the public charging infrastructure for electric lorries, requiring charging capacities of between 150 and 400 kW, is still sparse. As of February 2026, only around 600 such on-site and off-site charging stations were registered across Europe, with Sweden leading the way. This limited network poses a particular challenge: two fully depleted electric lorries cannot charge simultaneously at the same location if only one charging point is available. The resulting waiting times can directly delay laundry deliveries and, in the worst-case scenario, create conflicts between charging times and legally required driver rest periods. For textile rental service providers, however, this scenario is less likely. Their electric lorries generally operate within a limited delivery radius and return to the depot afterwards, where charging can take place more cost-effectively. Public fast-charging tariffs are subject to fluctuating prices, roaming fees and complex billing structures.
Compared to electric lorries, conditions for battery-powered passenger cars are considerably better. Companies have therefore long been using them for frequent travellers such as sales representatives and customer advisors. Charging infrastructure for passenger vehicles has been established within just a few years. Now, the infrastructure for electric lorries must catch up.
| New means of transport | Advantages | Challenges |
|---|---|---|
| Cargo bikes |
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| Electric lorries |
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