AN ANALYSIS OF THE LOGISTICS MARKET AND THIRD-PARTY LOGISTICS PROVIDERS

Over the past 15 years, there have been many shocks that have significantly affected international trade and supply chains. All these shocks affect the operations of businesses, especially those operating on the international stage. Logistics companies such as Third-party logistics (3PL) are an important link in the smooth transportation of goods from the point of production or sale to the point of consumption, offering numerous related activities in addition to the predominant transportation services. The purpose of this article is to examine and present the latest findings on the role of 3PL in global supply chains, to investigate the services provided by 3PL, and to analyse and compare the activities of the largest global 3PL operators. The analysis is based on the secondary statistical data available for 3PL logistics market. Main findings show that global logistics industry is continuously growing. Among all services provided by the 3PLs, the most outsourced are transportation, especially domestic transportation, warehousing, customs brokerage and freight forwarding. The limitation of this research lies in the fact that the analysis is based on the secondary data, and therefore the suggestion for the further research is to run primary research on services of 3PLs. This work contributes to the valorisation of 3PL and logistics services as one of the most important factors of the competitiveness of global supply chains.