What belongs in a first sustainability report for transport and logistics?
A first sustainability report for a transport or logistics company consists largely of three blocks: the fuel consumption of your own vehicles, the composition of your vehicle fleet, and the emissions you do not drive yourself but instead purchase from subcontractors or charter services. Around these are shorter sections on personnel and on the energy consumption of your office or warehouse. For an SME company, that report does not need to be a thick document; it is a clear presentation of figures that mostly already exist somewhere in your administration.
The order in which you build it determines whether it remains manageable. Start with fuel, because that is the largest and most concrete item. Then work out your vehicle fleet, so it is clear which vehicles correspond to which fuel flows. End with outsourced transport, because for that you need data from another party and that usually takes the most time.
Fuel: the basis of your figures
Fuel receipts, fuel card overviews and invoices from your own pump form the core of your report. For most transport companies, this is the item that explains the largest part of their own emissions, and it is also the item for which the data is usually already complete. An annual overview from your fuel card company, broken down by diesel, petrol or LNG, is often sufficient basis to convert to CO2 using an established emission factor.
It is wise to maintain one reference date and one source per fuel type here, so that the figure next year remains traceable to how it was derived. That sounds like a detail, but it is precisely what makes a report usable for a second year instead of a one-time exercise.
Your vehicle fleet: own vehicles and the administration behind them
In addition to fuel consumption itself, a report also requests a description of the vehicle fleet: number of vehicles, fuel type, and where available, year of manufacture or Euro standard if that information is accessible. This does not need to be an extensive fleet list; an export from the leasing company or insurance policy is usually sufficient to support the number and type of vehicles.
If you do not yet know which data for your vehicle fleet are relevant for an ESG questionnaire, you can have that clarified in a few questions. This provides an initial indication without you having to gather all the documents immediately.
Outsourced transport: what do you require from your transport provider?
The most challenging part of an initial sustainability report in this sector is usually the transport you outsource to subcontractors, charters or courier services. That emissions do not belong to your own fuel consumption, but can be part of what a buyer asks you for, depending on how the questionnaire is structured and which standard is applied.
In practice, this means that you ask your own subcontractors whether they can provide an indication of their emissions per trip or per kilometre, or whether you work with an average price per kilometre per transport mode. Not every buyer is permitted to request this level of detail; since March 2026, buyers subject to reporting obligations are subject to a limit on what they may require from a smaller supplier. An overview of what is and is not covered by this is available on the page with topics per situation.
From figures to report
Once fuel, vehicle fleet, and outsourced transport are in place, the rest of the report is mainly supplementary: employee numbers from payroll administration, and potentially energy consumption of the office or warehouse from the energy bill. These are figures that you confirm yourself based on the documents you already have; no one checks them beforehand, and that is not the purpose of this type of report.
To see how those documents are converted into a report that you can share with a customer, bank, or insurer, you can read how building the file works. The starting point is always the same: the data that exists, neatly organized, so that a next questionnaire is no longer a new search.
What a report is not
A sustainability report as described here is neither an audit nor a certification mark. No recognized body exists for this type of SME reporting, not at esgia and not at any other provider. It is your own representation of figures from your own administration, intended to answer a questionnaire, not to certify a claim. For the legal question of whether and to what extent your company is subject to reporting obligations, or what a specific customer may or may not ask, the official text of the directive or a lawyer remains the appropriate point of contact.
Do you want to see where your company stands before you start with the report? The quick scan provides a first indication in a few questions, free and without an account.