The difference between third-party logistics and fourth-party logistics

Third-party logistics refers to the production and operation enterprises concentrating their efforts on the main business, and entrusting the logistics activities originally handled by themselves to professional logistics service enterprises by contract, and maintaining close contact with logistics enterprises through information systems to achieve logistics. A logistics operation and management method with full-process management control.

Fourth-party logistics is defined as "a supply chain integrator that mobilizes and manages the resources, capabilities, and technologies of the organization's own and complementary service providers to provide an integrated supply chain solution." It can provide comprehensive supply chain solutions through the influence of the entire supply chain, and also bring greater value to its customers. It can integrate social resources on the basis of solving enterprise logistics and solve the problem of full sharing of logistics information, Issues such as the full utilization of social logistics resources.

Compared with "third-party logistics", "fourth-party logistics" has more services and covers a wider area, and requires higher companies engaged in freight logistics services, requiring them to open up new service areas and provide more Value-added services. The biggest advantage of "Fourth Party Logistics" is that it can ensure that products can be delivered to demanders "faster, better, and cheaper." In today's economic form, shippers/shippers are increasingly pursuing The global integration of the supply chain to meet the needs of multinational operations, multinational companies must rely more on logistics outsourcing due to their focus on their core business. Based on this reason, they not only use external forces at the operational level, but also At the strategic level, it also needs the help of outside forces to obtain "faster, better, and cheaper" logistics services day and night. According to expert analysis, fourth-party logistics is more profitable than third-party logistics because they have specialization Consulting services. Although this service is still small in scale, it will be a fast-growing part of the highly competitive Chinese logistics market.