As supply chains continue to navigate growing complexity and disruption, findings from the 2027 31st Annual 3PL Study are advancing the conversation around shipper-3PL relationships. The good news is that shippers and their 3PL and 4PL partners have more tools and resources to use than ever before to help them navigate forward. The 3PL report, entitled “Adapting Through Disruption: AI, Resilience and the Future of Logistics Partnerships,” emphasizes the strength of shipper-3PL alliances.
Such bonds are critical to support resiliency and manage risk in the face of supply chain and geopolitical disruptions, the acceleration of AI, and cargo theft and fraud. The annual 3PL Study is created by supply chain professor and researcher Dr. C. John Langley, Penske Logistics, and NTT Data, based on survey results with shippers and 3PLs globally. The largest concentration of respondents were based in North America and top sectors represented include the chemical, electronics, retail, CPG, food and beverage, and automotive industries.
Here’s a look at four central themes from the 2027 31st Annual 3PL Study:
Putting AI into operational use
For the last few years, the study has reported on the growing adoption of AI tools and the 2027 s 3PL Study highlights greater use of the technology for planning and execution. The most prevalent use of AI by shippers (66%) is in predictive analytics and risk sensing while 74% of 3PLs use it for generative AI capabilities such as chatbots and large language models (LLMs). It’s safe to say 3PLs have more sophisticated use of AI with other top uses like machine learning for prediction and classification (62%), and optimization and mathematical solvers (55%). Similarly, shippers use the same machine learning and generative AI tools but to a lesser extent.
The industry is certainly still building its AI-enabled solutions. When selecting a 3PL, shippers seek AI capabilities. What’s holding back greater adoption of AI tools? The top three barriers to adoption are data quality and availability, legacy systems and integration complexity, and budget constraints.
The study suggested shippers, in particular, have the best near-term opportunities in adopting AI for demand sensing, transportation planning, inventory optimization, risk sensing and customer visibility—all areas where the ROI is clearest with direct outcomes.
3PL-shipper partnerships: tighter and more collaborative
As we reported in the last year’s 30th annual 3PL study, shippers want longer term, strategic partnerships with their logistics providers. The 2027 study found strategic partnerships are marked by greater alignment and collaboration, and overall the vast majority of shippers credit their providers with improving service. A respectable 73% of shippers appreciate their 3PL’s innovative solutions, and 75% of shippers said they are consolidating their 3PLs partners, up from 50% last year.
What characterizes a strategic shipper 3PL partnership? These relationships are becoming more formal, data-driven and performance-oriented, with well-defined SLAs, regular business reviews and performance-measurement and feedback. To operationalize partnerships, shippers value defined SLAs, regular business reviews and performance measurement, while 3PLs stressed advanced analytics, real-time visibility and AI as key mechanisms of a partnership.
No matter the type of partnership—whether strategic, preferred provider, or basic provider—cost control has declined: 52% of shippers said 3PLs have contributed to reducing their overall logistics costs, compared to 75% last year. This finding is reflective of the challenging economic environment.
Seeking resilience and risk mitigation
Resilience, no longer a stand-alone risk management function, is now seen as a core strategic capability which must be built into shipper-3PL relationships before disruptions occur.
Both groups rank transportation capacity disruptions as the number-one risk and are taking steps to avoid these disruptions. Shippers are turning to invest in network flexibility like multi-carrier and multimodal strategies, alternative sourcing, and inventory buffering or regionalization. The top investment areas for their 3PL counterparts are systematic, analytics-driven capabilities (such as control towers), scenario planning, formal business continuity planning, and AI-driven decision support.
The 2027 3PL Study found that both groups are strengthening their networks, doing more contingency planning and sharing approaches to managing disruptions. Both cohorts also recognize the current state of risk collaboration is insufficient and they expect to deepen their partnerships and better align their objectives in the next few years.
Ongoing battle to fight freight fraud and cargo theft
Fraud in the cargo supply chain is a growing concern and perhaps not surprisingly, many shippers view fraud as very or extremely significant. 3PLs expressed greater confidence in their ability to prevent and respond to freight theft, with the majority very or extremely satisfied with their current use of technology to counter freight theft compared to just over one-third of shippers.
The larger looming problem is the growing level of strategic thefts, as we reported on in 2025, as differentiated from straight cargo theft and pilferage types of theft. Strategic thefts may involve carrier identify theft, fictitious pickups, account takeovers, and double brokering. Cyber-enabled theft is increasingly overlapping with strategic types of thefts where criminals combine compromised credentials, false identities, and routine operating exceptions to appear legitimate.
A number of government initiatives are proposed or underway to fight fraud and theft, particularly in the trucking industry. One recent crackdown effort by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) makes it harder for chameleon carriers to enter or manipulate the federal registration system with its MOTUS registration system that verifies carrier data in real time.
Lastly, the 31st Annual 3PL Study touched upon global conflicts and geopolitical disruptions About three-fourths of shippers reported major or several ongoing impact from global conflicts while logistics providers characterized the impact as minor or manageable. Hands down, transportation capacity and transit times are the most widely affected area, noted by the majority of both groups. Managing freight cost volatility is the next biggest concern for shippers while 3PLs are grappling with issues from sea and air route availability.