Management of the Transportation Function

At a number of points throughout this book we have had occasion to observe that far too many companies fail to make an adequate or proper distinction between transport and distribution as areas of management activity. The argument is frequently put forward that distribution involves moving goods from the factory to the marketplace, and since transportation is the means by which such movement is known, the two areas are more or less the same. We have already seen, however, that such a conclusion is invalid, since it ignores all other activities affecting and affected by the decision as to how goods are actually to be moved between various points.