1PL or First Party Logistics (Self Logistics) is where a company or individual transports and delivers their own goods, using their own vehicles. No other company is involved in any way in the movement of goods.

2PL or Second Party Logistics (Transportation Provider) is where a carrier (Roadways / Airways / Waterways / Railways) acts as a professional arranger of transactions between the buyer and the seller i.e. manages all the administrative and transport services. A 2PL logistics provider is asset based and will own the means of transport.

3PL or Third party Logistics is the most popular model for commercial shipping. A 3PL provider does what a 2PL provider does with additional services like warehousing including inventory management, product packaging, labelling, customs brokerage, IT services such as tracking products, ascertaining delivery status, and other services.

4PL or Fourth Party logistics provider will liaise or coordinate with one or more 3PL provider companies to provide the best service for their clients and above this also include project management, sourcing and negotiations, logistics strategy, technology and analytics, financial management and advisory. 

5PL or Fifth Party logistics, involves a fully integrated logistics solution to encompass the whole supply chain from beginning to end through multiple outsourced service providers.  The integration must be achieved through the application of IT solutions to provide full visibility throughout the supply chain in ‘real-time’. The 5PL logistics provider would need to control the entire supply chain regardless of how many different service providers were involved. With the focus on technology the 5PL solution is best suited to e-commerce.

6PL or Sixth Party Logistics is still mostly theoretical. 6PL is a fully integrated and partly automated supply chain solution monitored and driven by artificial intelligence (AI). It is evident that the application of AI across the supply chain would give huge technological advancements. For example: an incorporated supply chain wide AI system could monitor the whole supply chain using trends, ordering patterns and forecasting models and proactively send instructions upstream. This could automatically trigger goods production, send instruction to deliver stock or highlight anomalies. With the advancement in self-drive vehicles, warehouse robots and delivery drones some of the components are already being used today.