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By Editorial Staff

The domestic U.S. transportation industry has been weathering rising fuel costs and a decline in shipper activity as the country's economy has slowed toward, or tipped into, recession. But the American Trucking Associations' For-Hire Truck Tonnage Index, as reported at the end of February, showed a tick up of 2.4 percent in January, after a modest 1.5 percent increase in December.

Trucking comprises almost 70 percent of tonnage hauled on all domestic freight transportation modes, according to the ATA, which points to truck tonnage as a reliable barometer of the overall U.S. economy. But ATA Chief Economist Bob Costello notes that truck tonnage often leads both recessions and recoveries, and in some cases the tonnage indicator has even rebounded before the overall economy actually started a recession.

"I anticipate that truck tonnage will recover before the general economy, but I am withholding judgment on whether truck tonnage is in a recovery mode until I analyze another month or two of data," Costello said in the ATA statement on the January tonnage report.

3PL Growth Seen

Meanwhile, the broader third-party logistics (3PL) market continues to see expansion, although the cooling economy has slowed the segment's growth rate, according to the latest "Trends in 3PL/Customer Relationships" report from industry analyst firm Armstrong & Associates. Armstrong uses its proprietary database of 3,334 3PL customer relationships to identify the top outsourcers to 3PLs, service demand and market size by industry segment.

"We haven't finalized the numbers, but we anticipate that in 2007 we'll have seen about 7-7.8 percent growth in the U.S. third-party logistics market," says Evan Armstrong, president of Armstrong & Associates. "And in 2008 we anticipate the market will grow 7.5 percent." That compares to an average annual growth rate of just over 13 percent from 1996 to 2006, according to Armstrong, who says that the trend has been for the 3PL market to grow at about four times the rate for the overall economy.

While the "trucking recession" has prompted many service providers in that industry to ease rates down to maintain or add shipper customers, Armstrong does not expect a similar dynamic of dropping prices in the 3PL space. "If you're a company that is just outsourcing logistics and warehousing to a 3PL, then you'll see savings through the outsourcing, but if you've already outsourced those functions and are trying to renegotiate, I don't think you're going to see a significant level of savings," he says.

The Move to Strategic

The market will continue to challenge third-party logistics companies to offer broader coverage in terms of the depth and breadth their range of services. To date, surprisingly, the ongoing use of 3PLs has been tilted toward the tactical rather than the strategic, according to Armstrong & Associates' figures. "Only a small number of the relationships [between 3PLs and their customers], roughly 20 percent, are strategic," Armstrong says. "The rest are tactical." An example of a tactical relationship would be a retailer using a 3PL for regional warehousing, versus a more strategic relationship that might see the 3PL managing inbound and outbound transportation in addition to running warehousing.