The fantasy: your own delivery van, branded, on your schedule. The math: a vehicle + driver + fuel + maintenance runs ₹25,000–50,000/month whether it makes 10 or 100 deliveries. The borrowed-fleet model rents the vehicle by the trip.
The fixed-cost trap
A delivery vehicle is a fixed monthly cost amortised over deliveries — at 15 deliveries/day it's ₹55/delivery before fuel; at 5/day it's ₹165. Own fleets only make sense at sustained volume where the per-trip cost beats renting — which is ~50+ daily deliveries, every day, consistently.
The borrowed-fleet economics
Porter, Borzo, Shadowfax charge per trip — ₹60–150 per delivery depending on distance and vehicle. You pay exactly when you ship; zero when you don't. The cost is perfectly variable: a slow Tuesday costs nothing, a busy Saturday costs proportionally.
What you give up
Branding (the rider isn't yours), scheduling control (fleets are on-demand, not scheduled), and the perception of 'your own delivery'. What you keep: no driver HR, no vehicle downtime, no maintenance, no insurance.
The scale transition
If a node ever sustains 50+ daily deliveries in one zone, revisit — a dedicated vehicle might then beat per-trip. Below that, borrowed wins. Most sellers never reach the crossover — which is the point of borrowed.
Pure Parcel runs the whole stack described here — one place for every carrier.
See how →The playbook
Compute your per-trip break-even
Vehicle cost ÷ deliveries/day vs per-trip fare.
Rent by the trip until volume
Per-trip is free when idle.
Count the hidden own-fleet costs
Driver, fuel, maintenance, downtime, insurance.
Revisit at 50+/day sustained
The crossover where own starts winning.
