You browse online, find the product that you like, and place the order. The email confirmation arrives a few minutes later stating your shipment will be arriving within the next 5-10 business days. Easy, right? Let’s look at the bigger picture. How did it get here?
Logistics didn’t happen overnight, nor did it happen in the last millennium. It goes back further.
Ancient civilization grew occupancy in different parts of the world. To transport their new lives in various countries, they relied on ships and manpower to haul their resources. It wasn’t as sophisticated as it is today, however elaborate systems grew through human evolution. Industrial revolution, World War I and II gave rise to the use of motor transport. However, after the second World War, it moved from warfare to business. From here on, the industry grew from getting products from point A to point B the most efficient way. With rising technology, we have transformed logistics from ships and manpower, to cargo ships, cargo planes, railways, and automotive sources. Amazing, isn’t it?
In 2021, it’s easy to take logistics for granted, especially post pandemic, we don’t really think about how packages are managing to distribute all across the world. We all know that COVID-19 made a huge dent to our normalcy – the way our economy, social, environmental, financial structures operated has shifted tremendously. The changes in distribution networks were as a result in global shutdown and spreading of the virus, affecting the distribution network during the recovery process 1. A lot of businesses had to shut down operations due to lack of manpower, supply chain activity (demand), regulations placed by political entities, reducing the financial flow to keep the business afloat.
Therefore, many asset-based courier companies took a hit in their distribution.
But with steady recovery, we can anticipate a brighter future for logistics. In doing so, there’s a growth in third party brokerages with extensive experience in the industry allowing for new opportunities of networks to help businesses take off and thrive.
1 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296321005464
