Port drayage — terminal-to-warehouse shuttling, typically under 50 km per loop — tops every consultant’s list of ideal electrification candidates. Distance is trivial, routes are fixed, depots are adjacent. And yet our analysis of the Antwerp port context arrives at an unfashionable conclusion: for classic single-shift drayage, electrification works but swap economics usually don’t, and the segment’s real barriers are commercial, not technical.

Why the obvious case is weaker than it looks. Drayage fleets run on some of the thinnest margins in logistics; the tractor price premium of €150,000+ cannot be amortised by fuel savings at 40,000–60,000 km/year — the mileage is simply too low. Toll benefits help (port trucks cross the same CO₂-graded network) but at these mileages the €0.166/km gap yields €7,000–10,000/year, not the corridor’s €25,000. And battery swap — frequently proposed for ports — fails its own iron rule here: station utilisation from single-shift drayage volumes lands well below the ~20% breakeven. Swap is not the answer to low-utilisation questions.

Where it does work. (1) Double-shift drayage operations — the same trucks running 16–20 hours lift both the TCO and any swap case into viability. (2) Terminal-integrated operations where the port or terminal operator co-invests in charging as shared infrastructure (Antwerp’s concession-tender model points this way). (3) Green-contract-driven work: shippers paying documented premiums for zero-emission port legs — increasingly common in scope-3-sensitive retail and chemical logistics. (4) Used or leased vehicles: as the first used e-tractors arrive (2027+), drayage is their natural second life — low mileage demands, low residual risk tolerance required.

The practical sequence. Start with the grant stack (AanZET applies to Dutch-registered drayage; Belgian operations run the Flemish toll arithmetic), electrify the double-shift subset of the fleet first, and treat port-authority charging tenders as infrastructure opportunities rather than waiting for someone else to build.

WattTonne’s read. Port drayage electrifies on contracts, not on enthusiasm: the operator who converts a shipper’s scope-3 need into a priced zero-emission lane has a business; the one who buys trucks hoping the maths appears has a museum.