Have you also noticed that Supply Chain Managers have major gaps in their transport knowledge?

From a necessary evil to a strategic enabler

In the 1990s, transportation was seen as a necessary evil : a cost center to be optimized, rarely a strategic lever.

The focus was on inventory optimization, demand planning, and manufacturing efficiency — but rarely on trucks, transit times, or tracking.

Then globalization and e-commerce changed everything.

Supply chains stretched across continents, subcontracting spread worldwide, customers became more demanding, and lead times shrank.

Transport emerged as the glue of global performance: without it, no customer promise, no lean model, no advanced planning could hold.

And yet, in many Western organizations, transport has not received the strategic attention it deserves.

It is still viewed as technical, secondary, and often delegated to field specialists who lack influence in strategic decision-making.

A Blind Spot in the Education and Culture of Supply Chain Managers

In the past two decades, specialized programs and degrees in supply chain management have multiplied. They now produce generations of skilled managers, comfortable with Sales & Operations Planning, Demand Forecasting, IBP, and advanced planning tools.

Transport remains a marginal topic, sometimes reduced to a few hours in a multi-year curriculum.
The result: we are training supply chain experts but with significant gaps in transport knowledge.

Many managers can discuss forecasting algorithms, collaborative planning, or even AI but would struggle to explain the difference between full truckload and groupage, or between a TMS and a WMS, or to read a freight rate grid in road or ocean transport.

Yet understanding transport means understanding the real world of the supply chain — roads, ports, warehouses, drivers, and disruptions.

That’s where customer promises are kept, where environmental performance is played out, and sometimes where company survival depends.

A delegated and undervalued domain

In many organizations, transport is delegated to mid-level teams. These professionals, often technically excellent, have little or no access to strategic decision-making. They manage the day-to-day — tenders, disputes, carrier relations — but remain on the sidelines of strategic management.

The position of VP Supply Chain rarely goes to someone with a background in transport.

Preference is given to profiles from forecasting, procurement, or production planning — seen as more “analytical,” “clean,” and “corporate.”

This cultural bias perpetuates a misconception that transport is the weak link : costly, unreliable, and polluting. It reinforces the idea among Supply Chain Managers that it’s safer to keep transport at arm’s length rather than truly understand it.

The “Magic” 4PL solution

When the logistics equation becomes too complex with fragmented flows, driver shortages, rate increases, or customs constraints. The natural reflex is to hand the “mess” over to a major 4PL. Their pitch is reassuring: “We’ll take care of everything, while you retain strategic control.”

But this transfer of responsibility has a cost : the loss of internal expertise.
By outsourcing transportation management, companies gradually lose their detailed understanding of flows, costs, and performance levers.

The risk?
Becoming dependent on a single provider, unable to challenge KPIs or innovate in carrier relations. In other words, a supply chain blind in its own legs.

A cultural divide between strategy and operations

There is now a clear cultural divide between supply chain strategists and transport practitioners.
The former think in terms of flows, scenarios, models, and digital twins.
The latter speak in time slots, waiting times, port congestion, and driver shortages.

These two worlds coexist without truly understanding each other.
The first operates with modeled data; the second lives with raw data — the kind that comes from a broken truck, a closed border, or a sick driver.

Without mutual understanding, the supply chain cannot be resilient.
A strategy only works if it reflects the operational reality and that reality is transport.

Why does this situation persist?

Several factors explain this persistent disconnection:

• Historically, transport has often been outsourced.

• Culturally, logistics is seen as “execution,” while planning is seen as “intelligence.”

• Structurally, TMS tools have remained less integrated than ERP or APS systems, further isolating transport functions. Only 15% of manufacturing companies in Europe use a TMS, compared to 99% equipped with a WMS.

• Educationally, most programs focus on theory not on execution.

Over time, these biases have created a durable imbalance — one that even the most ambitious digitalization programs struggle to fix.

The new battleground for sustainable performance

Things are changing. The Covid crisis, the driver shortage, environmental pressures, trade wars, and geopolitical instability have all reminded us of one simple truth:
Without a controlled transport function, there can be no high-performing supply chain.

Today, transport is where the key battles are fought:

• CO₂ reduction,

• Service reliability,

• Agility in disruption management,

• Speed of decision-maing.

Transport is no longer an appendix of the supply chain, it is its beating heart.
And yet, few executives give it the strategic attention it truly deserves.

The Ugly Duckling or the key to maturity?

One might ask whether transport is doomed to remain the ugly duckling of an agile and resilient supply chain or whether it could finally become the engine of a new generation of supply chain leaders, grounded in the reality of physical flows.

This shift requires a rebalancing of skills:

• Training managers in transport execution and control,

• Giving operational experts a stronger voice,

• Promoting hybrid profiles who can connect data to the road.

Because it’s in this reconciliation, between strategy and execution, between data and reality that the truly intelligent supply chain will emerge.

It’s time to make transport great !

In thirty years, the supply chain has evolved from back-office to boardroom. But along the way, it left transport by the roadside.

If we want to build supply chains that are sustainable, resilient, and effective, we must restore transport culture to the heart of our organizations.

Alain Borri is co-founder and CEO of Sightness. He is based in Singapore. https://www.linkedin.com/in/alain-borri-91136617/

Sightness is a Data as a Service (DaaS) platform dedicated to freight. A leader in the European market, Sightness aims to expand its services to the ASEAN region. https://go.sightness.com/en/sightness-presentation-video