The next job is just one click awayMENTION “logistics” and it may bring to mind shiny FedEx or UPS vans with their neatly uniformed drivers. However, the business of shifting cargo by road, especially larger loads, is far more fragmented and inefficient than the image of its best-known brands would suggest.
Even the world-famous names in parcel delivery compete with many lesser firms. Likewise, “third-party logistics”—the outsourcing of a business’s transport needs, including running fleets of lorries and vans on its behalf—also has some big firms but lots of smaller ones. There is even more fragmentation in what Americans call the “truckload” part of the industry—one-off deliveries of entire lorry trailers—and in the “less-than-truckload” business—the carriage of a pallet or two of goods. Whereas America’s top five airlines earn around 90% of their industry’s domestic revenues, the equivalent figure for the top five logistics firms is just 20%, reckons Armstrong & Associates, a consulting firm. Official figures show that one in nine American truckers is an independent owner-operator rather...Continue reading
Source: Business and finance http://ift.tt/1TVf52c
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