Abstract
The third party logistics industry is currently undergoing a rapid transition. The main drivers of these changes are advances in information and communications technologies and the emergence worldwide of the so called “e-tailers or dot-coms”. The advances in information technology (IT) make possible many new strategies and enable integration of the supply chain system. In addition, the new Internet-enabled companies are setting up shop quickly and in some cases outsourcing all of their logistics and transportation functions increasing the need for both logistics services and a wide variety of new product offerings. In this paper we provide a characterization of the industry and discuss past and future research opportunities