Abstract—In this article we have expanded Professor James Cooper’s discussions of ‘mega carriers’ for
one-stop shopping of logistics services to a multi-tiering model to describe different alliances in third-party
logistics. To be able to support the increasing demands of shippers, a third-party logistics provider must
have a portfolio with many different services, either in-house or available from a supplier network. As a
consequence, third-party logistics cannot be reduced to an alliance between a single shipper and a single
provider. Both the shipper and the provider are also involved in other alliances and these often strongly
interact with the shipper–provider relationship. Furthermore, this relationship varies across the different
phases of third-party logistics projects: design, development, implementation, and operation. Therefore,
in order to broaden the picture and to extend the modelling of Cooper and others, we suggest a five-layer
model with users and four tiers of logistic service providers for the description and analysis of logistics
and transport industry issues in general and third-party logistics in particular. This conceptual model is
then illustrated and validated by a case study describing the implementation of an alliance which involved
the redesign of a European distribution operation for service parts.