Los Angeles streets are always buzzing with light-duty trucks that deliver millions of packages and goods to homes and businesses daily. In Los Angeles County, light-duty truck trips constitute an overwhelming majority of truck trips within the region - over 85% of daily trips in 2023!
Light-duty trucks (LDT), which include multi-purpose vehicles and trucks with a gross vehicle weight rating of less than 10,000 lbs., have uniquely different travel characteristics as compared to other truck classes.
With LOCUS’ industry-first product that captures LDT movements, we focus on the “door-to-door” deliveries to glean powerful insights into last-mile logistics, truck movement and stopping patterns, and their impacts on different communities.
These last-mile deliveries typically tend to be concentrated in the midday period (10AM – 3PM) and PM periods (3PM – 7 PM), accounting for over 70% of the total trips in the county. But as seen in the image above, there are variations by neighborhoods. In DTLA, which has a higher concentration of businesses, the share of trips in the AM peak is almost double of what’s seen in more residential/mixed use neighborhoods such as Koreatown.
Most of these LDT last-mile delivery trips are very short, as trucks make multiple stops. 96% of trips are completed in under 15 mins, with almost all trips under 2 hours.
The short nature of these trips is also reflected in the trip distance distribution – with an average length of just under a mile. Only 4% of the trips are longer than 5 miles, mainly between the distribution centers to stock up on packages – filtering the data to look at trip ends shows exactly that.
In addition to the expanded daily trip data (“planning data”), LOCUS Truck has another powerful feature – operational data layers. Using observed data, we can analyze granular (think monthly, at specific locations) truck stop patterns and fuel mix of trucks visiting a specific location using the observed data.
Here are the statistics in February 2025 for different neighborhoods/cities in LA county – each having a unique land-use mix.
|
Neighborhood |
Total Stops |
Total Vehicles |
Median Stop Duration (Mins) |
% of stops by Electric Vehicles |
|
DTLA |
32,743 |
2,713 |
8.1 |
5% |
|
Hollywood |
39,105 |
2,371 |
7.7 |
2% |
|
Santa Monica |
77,182 |
2,476 |
5.6 |
2% |
|
Pasadena |
112,363 |
2,058 |
3.7 |
3% |
|
Vernon |
13,103 |
619 |
5.9 |
1% |
Access to accurate and validated mobility insights is increasingly critical for business owners, policymakers, and urban planners alike, as they navigate a constantly changing environment. Interested in learning more about LOCUS Truck and how it can support your decision-making? Reach out to us at product@locusdata.io.