Transportation & Logistics Industry Consulting

Fundamental changes in the transportation and logistics industry demand that companies radically reinvent themselves to succeed. BCG’s logistics consulting and transportation consulting teams help clients embrace digital innovation, restructure, and better serve their customers.

Defending against such industrywide transformation can seem impossible. By contrast, embracing transformation—and outpacing it with a companywide transformation of your own—opens up possibilities.

Transportation and logistics companies face existential threats from across the competitive landscape. Digital newcomers are redefining how to manage transportation operations and service customers. Longtime collaborators are expanding into adjacent spaces up and down the value chain. Even some customers, such as e-tailers, are morphing into competitors.

Where We Deliver Value Across the Transportation and Logistics Industry

Our transportation and logistics consulting team achieves transformations across the postal and parcel, rail, shipping, and logistics industries. Our approach positions companies for success in the face of current challenges. It also prepares them to ride impending waves of change, such as shifting trends in global trade, the uncertainty and volatility of the postpandemic reality, and consumer and regulatory demands for improvements in sustainability.

Our Transportation and Logistics Services

Rail Industry

Our transportation consulting team partners with urban transportation, rail freight, rail maintenance, and rail technology companies. We help our rail clients boost efficiency while simultaneously taking on the limits of existing rail infrastructure and the changing patterns of demand and mobility.

Shipping Industry

With our guidance, shipping clients optimize their fleet and routing strategies to outmaneuver overcapacity and demand volatility. Our logistics consulting experts help develop creative end-to-end approaches and new business models for bulk and container shippers, as well as terminal operators.

Postal and Parcel Industry

Our tailored strategic advice enables postal and parcel companies to create value from well-recognized brands and local customer bases. We help players build on their customers’ familiarity and trust to maintain attractive profit pools. And we position them to claim and optimize last-mile advantages.

Logistics and Freight Industry

Our logistics consulting teams partner with companies specializing in sea forwarding, contract logistics, road and air freight, and cargo. We aid these companies in homing in on their most profitable regions and markets. And we help deploy digital and analytics capabilities to tap value once achievable only through asset-intensive approaches.

Where We Deliver Value in the Transportation and Logistics Industry

Our transportation and logistics consulting team achieves transformations across the postal and parcel, rail, shipping, and logistics industries to help clients:

Shape strategy in the pursuit of growth. We help you tailor your operating model and organization to the current realities of the market—and to anticipate the changes you’ll need for the future.
Invest continuously in tech, analytics, and capabilities. We help you digitize your business on your own—or partner with disruptive players upending logistics operations and the transportation market.
Embrace greener supply chains and technologies. We help navigate new regulations and their implications, such as the shipping fuel regulations in light of IMO 2020. We also move beyond compliance, helping to meet customers’ rising demand for environmentally sustainable services.
Deliver service excellence. With our guidance, you can deploy a multichannel strategy to develop and deliver an end-to-end customer journey.
Understand and adapt to market dynamics. We help you respond to current trends in trade, tariffs, and protectionism—and anticipate new and emerging shifts.

Our Clients’ Success in Transportation and Logistics

Tackling Decarbonization with the Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller Center for Zero Carbon

CEO Bo Cerup-Simonsen outlines the critical role that the newly formed organization will play in generating sustainable shipping by helping to innovate, implement, and scale the solutions that are best for society.

Our Center for Excellence

Transportation and logistics organizations that adopt smart digital strategies and frameworks generate new revenue streams and enhance their business models. Offering a complete range of digital transformation support, our Center for Digital in Transportation partners with clients from the initial steps of innovation strategy to the incubation of new corporate business ventures.

Our Featured Tools and Solutions

Container XChange

This digital transportation marketplace, originally built by BCG, matches the supply of and demand for containers across competing providers. This tool helps clients reduce their costs and carbon intensity and increase their supply chain efficiency.

Shipping Benchmark Initiative

This initiative provides an easy way for shipping companies to compare their costs and performance with competitors across the industry. It uses data from more than 3,000 of the world’s commercial vessels to help companies improve their competitiveness, learn best practices, keep up with the latest industry trends, and educate stakeholders about the value they provide.

Meet Our Transportation and Logistics Consulting Leaders

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Our Latest Insights on Transportation and Logistics

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There’s nothing trivial about spare parts for freight and passenger rail operators. Having the required parts in the right place at the right time is essential for smooth operations. And improving maintenance efficiency is crucial for rail operators seeking to unlock growth opportunities and fulfill their potential in the fight against climate change.