Situation: To determine whether the market is trending toward insourcing or outsourcing, Jan Sjöstrand, who founded UnitedLog AB, says you have to look at history.

The Details: The outsourcing trend, he says, began in the early 1980s and its original purpose, from a transportation company's perspective, was to "lock" customers in by providing warehousing services that would make it difficult for customers to switch to a competitor.

What it Means: 3PLs soon became 4PLs and "control tower" solutions were commonplace, but they weren't necessarily profitable and the industry slowly began a shift back toward insourcing -- until the global financial crisis hit. Companies looking to remove assets from their balance sheets caused a resurgence in outsourcing. Today, Jan Sjöstrand is seeing a trend toward insourcing, but not as it was applied in the past.