Reflection: Everyone talks about staying true to one’s original aspiration—so what is the original aspiration of modern logistics?

Modern logistics should be warm, colorful, and full of life.

In this era of dazzling, sweeping transformation in the logistics sector, on the one hand, modern logistics technologies are advancing by leaps and bounds, with cutting-edge smart‑logistics innovations emerging one after another; on the other hand, delivery speeds are steadily increasing. 24-hour delivery, same-day delivery, three-hour delivery, and even minute‑precise arrival—on the one hand, the logistics industry is continually being called upon to cut costs, boost efficiency, and serve the real economy, among other priorities.

These days, everyone says: “Stay true to your original aspiration, and you will see things through to the end.” So in this era, what is the logistics industry’s original aspiration? Is it technology? A business model? Speed? Or cost reduction? This is indeed a question that all professionals in the logistics sector must ponder carefully.

Recently, during his speeches, Old Wang has been discussing the philosophy of logistics development, often emphasizing three “haves.” In other words, modern logistics should be warm, colorful, and full of life. Among them, I put “Warmth” has been placed first. So, what does this “three‑fold warmth” have to do with the original vision of modern logistics?

01 The Original Vision of Modern Logistics

Service creates value, and it should be delivered with warmth!

Modern logistics should be “warm” logistics—by “warm,” we mean that modern logistics must prioritize the service experience.  

Logistics is, first and foremost, a service industry. At its core, the service sector must excel at delivering quality service; it is through service that value is created—this is the very essence of the logistics industry. But unfortunately, these days the logistics industry rarely emphasizes service; instead, everyone is focused on cutting costs, touting cutting-edge technologies, and bragging about speed. ……

Service‑driven value creation manifests in three ways: first, by delivering value to customers; second, by generating value for the organization itself; and third, by ensuring a positive, warm‑hearted experience throughout the entire service journey.  

Stay true to our original aspiration, and we will see things through to the end; firmly grasp the logistics industry. “Providing excellent service”—this original aspiration is the development philosophy we must prioritize.

A central tenet of the logistics industry is service, with cost and efficiency as its two fundamental pillars. This constitutes the core principle underlying modern logistics—service, cost, and efficiency—and must be steadfastly upheld. Unshaken for a century.

How can we deliver exceptional service? First, we must thoroughly understand and meet our customers’ needs, providing them with a service experience that exceeds their expectations. Customer demand for logistics services is multi‑tiered, so our offerings should likewise be structured across different levels.  

Clearly, simply cutting logistics service costs without improving service quality will not yield satisfactory results. According to the fundamental principles of modern logistics: We should aim to minimize the service cost of the logistics system while maintaining the established level of logistics service. The reason we emphasize optimizing logistics service costs rather than simply minimizing them is twofold: first, our logistics industry also needs an appropriate level of profitability to achieve win-win outcomes with our customers; second, the essence of cost reduction in logistics lies in delivering services that help customers cut costs and create value.

If logistics companies keep slashing service costs, they’ll have no profit—so how could they possibly deliver good service? According to the fundamental framework of modern logistics proposed by Mr. Wang, cost and benefit are the two core pillars: cost reduction aims to lower expenses for customers, which can be achieved through measures such as reducing distribution costs, minimizing product‑damage costs, cutting inventory holding costs, and enhancing service value; meanwhile, benefit primarily refers to the economic performance of logistics enterprises, a factor of paramount importance.

Unfortunately, not many people seem to grasp even this most basic common sense. As a result, the logistics industry often comes across as cold and impersonal, with poor customer service, frequent incidents of rough handling during sorting, and persistent problems like damaged or lost packages and delivery delays. Meanwhile, workers are often portrayed as grimy, downtrodden, and perpetually frustrated. The logistics sector itself is frequently painted as a struggling, low‑margin business that can’t raise prices—so much so that even highway toll booths seem bent on squeezing its operators, demanding fees at every turn. “Toll money.” Even in the delivery sector, since the widespread deployment of long‑term loss‑making parcel lockers, couriers often bypass customers altogether, simply dropping packages into the lockers without prior notice—and no longer deliver them to the doorstep. Strictly speaking, this violates their service commitments.

Why does modern logistics lack warmth? Why shouldn’t it be made more welcoming? Why can’t it offer greater differentiation? And why not put service at the core, rather than cost reduction?

02 The Responsibilities of Modern Logistics

Achieving green development means that modern logistics must have a “color”!

Greenery fills the garden, spring shines brightly—green logistics, serving society!

Green logistics is logistics with a color! As everyone knows, colorful logistics is beautiful and visually appealing, which is why it’s widely talked about. Although green logistics isn’t the original vision of the logistics industry, it has become its ultimate goal.

In the past, When experts discuss green logistics, they often keep “green” lofty and abstract, never grounding it in practical application. The discourse is replete with lofty principles of green logistics—sound in theory—but when left abstract, it amounts to little more than empty rhetoric, difficult to put into practice. So how can companies truly embrace green logistics? Experts often fail to address this, or their guidance remains too vague.  

Many of the green logistics measures discussed by experts remain purely theoretical; a “green sky” is neither a pleasant sight nor a reassuring one—it’s rather an eerie, unsettling phenomenon.  

Logistics entrepreneurs and industry leaders are pragmatic: seeing the appeal of green logistics, they’ve enthusiastically championed it and put forward numerous action plans to advance sustainable practices.  

However, Old Wang discovered that, Many companies talk a good game when it comes to green logistics, yet they are extremely reluctant to invest in its development, preferring to pay lip service rather than take concrete action. This is a... “I’ve put on the ‘green’ hat, and I think it looks great!”

Tell me, everyone—does a logistics entrepreneur wearing a green hat look good?  

Green logistics must be put into practice, with concrete measures and solutions in place. Only when greenery blankets the land can we truly say that spring has blossomed throughout the garden—and that’s what makes it genuinely beautiful.  

We have been committed to advancing the practical implementation of green logistics in China, striving to infuse the entire logistics sector with sustainability. To this end, we have launched the China Green Warehousing and Delivery Action Plan—the country’s first actionable roadmap for green logistics!  

The Green Warehousing and Distribution Action Plan outlines four key solutions for implementing green logistics. They are: green warehousing facility solutions, green logistics technology and equipment solutions, green logistics packaging solutions, and green logistics management and model innovation solutions. These constitute the practical solutions for implementing green logistics.  

Green Warehousing and Distribution Action Plan From among hundreds of green logistics measures aimed at energy conservation and consumption reduction, ten key initiatives for green warehousing and distribution have been selected—measures that are replicable, scalable, and capable of delivering immediate, tangible results with significant green‑energy benefits. These constitute the actionable steps for implementing green logistics.  

The Green Warehousing and Distribution Action Plan also examines the market mechanisms of green logistics. Long-term mechanisms for advancing the sustainable development of green logistics—such as the aftermarket mechanism, the market transmission mechanism, and the carbon‑trading mechanism—have been proposed. By activating these mechanisms, we can ensure the sustained growth of green logistics, keeping the momentum of progress intact.

Old Wang is committed to green logistics—a social responsibility—and he’s eager to champion this cause and invite like-minded colleagues to join him. Shall we make a pact?

03 The Future of Modern Logistics

Realizing smart logistics—smart logistics should be alive.

It has color, it has warmth, and it also needs to be alive—logistics with a life of its own is truly engaging. So how can we bring logistics into the modern age with a sense of vitality?

Living organisms are, first and foremost, capable of actively receiving and processing information. The founder of artificial intelligence, Alan Turing, proposed that a… The “Turing Test,” designed to assess whether a machine possesses intelligence, sparked the field of artificial intelligence and laid its foundational principles. To this day, we often employ the Turing Test to determine whether a robot is intelligent: we pose questions to the robot, and if its responses are indistinguishable from those of a human—so much so that it’s difficult to tell whether the answer came from a machine or a person—we conclude that the machine has achieved artificial intelligence.

In fact, what machines possess is machine intelligence, not artificial intelligence; however, machine intelligence has indeed achieved tremendous progress by mimicking the mechanisms through which human intelligence arises. The hottest area in modern artificial intelligence is neural networks. + Machine learning and neural networks are models built by mimicking the information-processing mechanisms of the human brain—specifically, the interconnected pathways of neural networks. Machine learning also replicates the patterns and processes of human learning; however, its capabilities and efficiency are so far superior, with a much broader scope of perception, that it has already surpassed human limits. This has led us to worry: might machine intelligence eventually outstrip humanity, leaving us as slaves to our own creations?

It can be said that links connect information, information gives rise to big data, and the processing of big data coupled with continuous learning spawns intelligence; in turn, this intelligence drives the development of smart logistics. Smart logistics has breathed new life into logistics systems.  

I am In 2009, drawing on the application of IoT technologies in the logistics sector and the principle of intelligence emerging from connectivity, the concept of “smart logistics” was proposed for the first time, accompanied by a formal definition: Smart logistics refers to a modern logistics system that, leveraging IoT technologies, extends the Internet into the physical world and integrates the digital network with the physical logistics infrastructure. It enables state sensing, real-time analytics, and precise execution within the logistics system, ultimately achieving autonomous decision-making and continuous learning and improvement, thereby endowing the system with intelligent capabilities.  

After its introduction, smart logistics did not develop rapidly and failed to generate significant attention. It was only with the deep integration of the Internet of Things—enabling the real-time generation of big data, as well as the processing of that data and the computational and learning capabilities of logistics systems—that smart logistics truly began to advance. Smart logistics comprises three core systems: big data and cloud computing have given rise to a “logistics brain,” forming an intelligent logistics decision‑making system; and the internet… + The application of IoT technologies and the deepening development of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) have propelled the emergence of a smart logistics neural network, giving rise to an intelligent logistics information transmission and processing system. Meanwhile, unmanned delivery systems, robots, automated sorting, automated warehouses, driverless forklifts, autonomous trucks, and other smart and automated devices constitute the execution layer of smart logistics.

Smart logistics is advancing rapidly. It monitors your shopping cart, your brand preferences, and your purchasing habits—and even tracks how long you linger on certain product categories on e‑commerce platforms. Based on this data, it predicts what you’re likely to buy, when, and in what quantities. It then conducts predictive analytics on demand patterns in specific regions, enabling it to plan and orchestrate logistics operations in advance. As a result, the items you’re about to purchase are delivered ahead of time to your city, neighborhood, or even a nearby convenience store, so that by the time you place your order, delivery is swift and conveniently close at hand. The order hasn’t been placed yet, but the goods are shipped first; the logistics system not only comes to life, but it will also… “Mind reading,” along with intelligence—this is what many companies are doing with their “smart前置 warehouses.”