THE EFFICIENCY OF THE GLOBAL TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM

In these turbulent times for the international market, the growth of the world trade has put some new demands on trasportation systems. Global transportation systems have become the object of study in modern logistics. Transportation systems are identified with theoretical basis of a transportation chain. Modern logistics studies the concept of transportation chain optimization as a part of a global logistics chain. A transport chain, like any other chain, is composed of a series of connected links. As a chain which breaks at its weakest link, the transportation chain breaks because of the inefficiency of its links. This paper tries to analyze the efficiency of the global transportation system through the efficiency of a transportation chain, i.e. the strength of its individual links. A global logistics operator is a starting point for the functioning of a multimodal transportation as an example of such transportation system. The efficiency of the global transportation system is the result of the efficiency of its components. The role of the logistics operator is to take over the responsibility to meet the requirements of consignees. A consignee i.e. a client, a signatory to a contract on multimodal transportation has given the logistics operator the right to carry out the transportation business on his behalf. Thus the consignee is allowed more time for dedicating himself to the market and the marketing of his products. The global logistics operator is given the possibility to develop a competitive global transportation system which will not significantly influence the increase of price and delivery terms per unit of goods transported. The global transportation system will be efficient only if its individual components are efficient.