– Interesting article from logisticsmngmnt.com
Jeff Berman, Group News Editor — Logistics Management, 4/17/2009
ALEXANDRIA, Va.—In an effort to provide pertinent data on business conditions within the third-party logistics (3PL) sector, the Transportation Intermediaries Association (TIA) has rolled out a new quarterly report focusing on the trends and practices of the 3PL industry.
Dubbed the TIA 3PL Market Report, TIA officials said it will provide a “representative understanding of what is happening within this business sector.
Data for the report is based on confidential feedback from 24 TIA member companies, whom answer questions on various topics, including: number of shipments by mode, total billing, and gross margins. Other data collected are customer-based forecasts to offer up expectations of near-term business volume.
Participating TIA member companies are broken up into three categories for comparison to avoid anti-trust issues, according to the TIA. The categories are: more than $10 million in month in gross billing; $3 million to $10 million per month in gross billing; and less than $3 million per month in gross billing.
“The objective of this report is to gather data from our members to find out what is really going on in the industry,” said Walter Weart, TIA Communications Manager, in an interview. “Many of the reports out there are done by [organizations] with educated and informed guesses but don’t have the depth of resources that we do. It is probably some of the best data that has ever been gathered on 3PLs.”
Weart added that this type of data has not been made previously available in the 3PL sector in the form of a “rolling history” by quarter that will ultimately build up a strong database with information on market conditions and trends.
Read the rest of the article here.
