What is Trucking Logistics?

Thank you for your enlightenment of the definition of "Logistics". It encompasses the whole industry of trucking.

My husband is starting a transportation company moving loads only in Texas. I like the sound of Logistics in our company name. Some people in the business say it isn't appropriate because logistics involves ships and airplanes. When I look up logistics in the dictionary it says commercial activity of transporting goods to customers, which is what our company will be doing. So, would we seem odd if we did add Logistics to our name?

It's not a logistics company, it's primarily a trucking company. Why the hell do they call it logistics?

Freight companies who specialize in truck transportation often have the most difficult time with transportation logistics. This is because other forms of transportation have to follow established routes while truck transportation can move along a vast network of corridors.

Here is what I mean. Freight shipping by plane or train has to conform to flight schedules, airport availability and established cargo routes. Train transportation can only go where there are train tracks and the goods have to be taken to a site where the trains are accessible. Trucks, however, can go almost anywhere. There is a huge spiderweb of highways and roads that stretches across the continent and trains can go directly to the site where a client produces or delivers goods. This kind of freedom and flexibility creates all kinds of logistical headache. I know from experience that logistics jobs are really hard work.

The best way to see how important trucking logistics is is to go to a country that does it poorly. I spent some time working as a consultant in several Southeast Asian countries. In some of these countries the transportation infrastructure is very poor, there are few standardized rules for driving and the is little enforcement for bad behavior. In conditions like these it is very, very difficult to efficiently move goods from one place to another. Even short shipments of relatively easy goods often fell pray to mistakes and delays. That's why they called me in. It was my job to find practical ways to overcome these obstacles. It was hard work but I knew I was doing something important.

I used to have a good friend whose family owned a small trucking company. Obviously they employed a number of truckers but that also had a pretty large staff that focused just on the logistics of trucking. They never left the office to go on the road at all.

There really is a lot to consider. Trucking depends in large part on a achieving a maximum amount of efficiency. In order to make money you have to move the largest amount of goods at the lowest possible cost in as quick a time as possible. This takes a lot of planning and preparation.

Luckily my friend only worked as a mechanic. He was a bright guy but his gifts involved wrenches and grease a lot more than computers and schedules.