If you run haulage, freight forwarding, warehousing or distribution for larger customers, ESG questionnaires increasingly land on your desk — and they zero in on the thing that defines your business: moving things burns fuel. This guide maps what logistics and transport buyers actually ask for, and how to produce numbers you can stand behind — logistics is one sector in our ESG-requirements-by-industry overview.
Why logistics gets asked about emissions above all
For most customers, your transport activity is a chunk of their Scope 3 emissions — the emissions in their value chain they don't directly control. That makes your fuel and fleet data genuinely useful to them, and it's why a logistics ESG questionnaire is, more than anything, a carbon and fuel questionnaire. If you get one area right, make it your emissions data.
That said, buyers also ask about safety and labour — driver conditions, road safety, and working-time compliance are real parts of a transport operator's risk profile.
The requests you'll see most
Fleet emissions and fuel data
The core of the assessment:
- Fuel consumption — litres of diesel/petrol, or kWh for electric vehicles, over a period.
- Fleet emissions — Scope 1 emissions from your own vehicles, and Scope 2 from any electric charging or facilities.
- Emissions intensity — increasingly, emissions per tonne-kilometre or per shipment (the metric standardised by the GLEC Framework and ISO 14083), so the buyer can attribute a share to their freight.
- Fleet profile — vehicle types, ages, Euro emission standards, and any low-emission or electric vehicles.
- Efficiency measures — route optimisation, load consolidation, driver eco-training, telematics.
Your fuel data is the foundation. Fuel card statements and purchase records convert directly into a defensible emissions figure — our carbon calculator turns litres into CO₂e, and customer wants carbon footprint walks through the request end to end.
Warehousing and facilities
If you operate depots or warehouses:
- Energy use — electricity and heating, and Scope 2 emissions.
- Waste and packaging — handling, recycling, packaging reduction.
- Refrigeration — refrigerant type and leakage for cold-chain operations (a real emissions source).
Safety and labour
- Road and driver safety — accident rates, safety policy, vehicle maintenance regime.
- Working time — compliance with drivers' hours and working-time rules.
- Labour conditions — fair wages, no forced labour (relevant where subcontracting or agency drivers are involved), training.
- Subcontractor management — if you subcontract haulage, how you assess those operators.
Governance
Standard across sectors: supplier code of conduct, anti-bribery, and how you manage your own suppliers.
Calculating what they ask for
The good news: transport emissions are among the most straightforward to calculate honestly, because fuel maps cleanly to CO₂e.
- Gather fuel records — fuel card data, purchase invoices, telematics, for a full 12 months.
- Convert to emissions — apply standard emission factors to litres/kWh (the carbon calculator does this).
- Add facilities — electricity and heating for depots/warehouses.
- Derive intensity if asked — divide emissions by tonne-kilometres or shipments so customers can attribute their share.
- Document your method — note what's included and the factors used, so the figure is defensible.
The evidence to assemble
- Fuel and energy records — fuel cards, invoices, telematics, utility bills.
- Fleet list — vehicles, ages, Euro standards, fuel types.
- Safety records — accident data, maintenance logs, safety policy.
- Working-time and driver records.
- Policies — environmental, health & safety, code of conduct.
- Subcontractor information — who you use and how you vet them.
The assessment checklist helps you spot gaps before the questionnaire arrives.
What not to do
- Don't estimate fuel when you can measure it. You almost certainly have fuel-card or invoice data — use the real figures.
- Don't assume unmeasured means zero. If you've never split depot energy from fleet fuel, say so and start tracking — don't guess.
- Don't ignore subcontracted transport. If you outsource haulage, buyers still expect you to account for and manage it.
- Don't answer each customer from scratch. Your fleet and fuel data is the same for everyone — calculate once, reuse everywhere.
The bottom line
Logistics and transport ESG questionnaires are, at their core, about fuel and fleet emissions — with safety and labour alongside. Your fuel records convert cleanly into a defensible carbon figure, so build that once, add depot energy and safety data, and reuse the package across every customer whose Scope 3 you're part of.
Turn fuel data into the carbon figure every customer asks for.
ESG Passport centralises your fuel, fleet, energy and safety data and maps it to what buyers ask — so the next logistics questionnaire reuses a figure you can stand behind.