3PL Web Networks Formed To Retain E-Commerce Data

NEW ORLEANS — Logistics and trucking industry leaders are creating their own Internet-based services because they consider information generated by their network of suppliers and customers too valuable to pass on to third-party, Internet-based firms.

What has evolved is a race between technology providers with expertise in the type of integration that the supply chain needs and logistics and transportation professionals who have supply chain expertise but not the technology background to build networks. While the two groups acknowledge that they need each other, large logistics and transportation firms are unwilling to part with what several people call the Holy Grail of the Internet age — information.

Carriers value that information because it can reveal trends about profitable shipping lanes, opportunities for savings through reduced empty miles, customer tendencies that may provide business opportunities, payment data and other helpful information. Shippers and third-party logistics providers stand to gain similar valuable information through the Internet.

At the Council of Logistics Management conference Sept. 24-27, the need of companies to find a way to use the Internet to their benefit or risk extinction was evident in the amount of discourse on the subject among the roughly 5,000 participants. Steve Rivers, managing partner with Transact.com, a Harleysville, Pa., online software communications firm, predicted that 60% of existing third-party logistics firms would be out of business by 2005 because of their inability to properly adopt Internet technology.

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