I'm always on the lookout to make sure we're not hammering away at too many cliché or overly-obvious themes that force reader's eyes to roll back into their heads. You read them in every publication in the market: communication is key; get to know your carriers; readily share information with all your supply chain partners. Yeah, yeah, that all sounds reasonable.

But after Executive Editor Tom Andel spent some time with Rosalyn Wilson to discuss the overarching themes of her 18th Annual State of Logistics Report, we couldn't help but feel that shippers are actually listening to and acting upon these messages. According to Wilson, improved communication, carrier collaboration, information sharing—all the reoccurring themes that we delicately, yet consistently endorse through case studies and columns—are now being put into practice by many best-in-class U.S. shippers. And, it's beginning to pay off.

As a matter of fact, Wilson is pretty sure that these improved, dare I say more sophisticated, logistics practices just may be the only reason that logistics as a percent of our nominal GDP stayed just under 10 percent in 2006—it rang in at 9.9 percent.

From her research and countless practitioner interviews, Wilson surmised that without the improved shipper/carrier/3PL collaboration, innovation, and communication practices, logistics costs would have easily proceeded north of 10 percent of U.S. GDP—the number that the report's founding father, Robert Delaney, set back in 1984 as the ideal level of logistics costs as a percentage of the U.S. economy.

“There's a new state of interdependence,” says Wilson. She believes that shippers have been pushed to become strategic, and they've responded well by executing new logistics and supply chain tactics that rely on a mix of global resources. “There's a much higher degree of collaboration,” she says. “Shippers are now willing to share information that they didn't want to share before, so everyone can make better decisions.”

Andel offers his insightful look inside the 18th Annual State of Logistics Report and shares Wilson's perspectives on what all the facts and figures truly mean for shippers and their future planning. Then the LM staff, as it's done for the past 18 years, puts the state of each mode of transportation into perspective, offering shippers a deeper level of understating.

After fully digesting our 2007 Annual Report, I strongly encourage shippers to jump right into the 2007 Global 3PL Roundtable. I want to quickly thank our esteemed panel of Evan Armstrong, Brooks Bentz, John Langley, Robert Lieb, and Chris Saynor. Trying to keep their passions for the 3PL market contained in three pages was impossible, so make sure to read the entire discussion on logisticsmgmt.com/global3PL and attend the live webcast on July 25.

Comments? E-mail me at michael.levans@reedbusiness.com