How Many 3PLs Are There? 70,879 US Businesses in 2026

The US has 70,879 3PL businesses by IBISWorld’s 2026 count

IBISWorld, the industry research firm, sizes its US third-party logistics industry at 70,879 businesses for 2026, 0.5% more than in 2025. Its count has grown at that same 0.5% a year on average since 2021. IBISWorld files the industry under its own code, OD5504, rather than a government industry code, and the page does not publish how the count is built.

Government data come at the question from the other side. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has no 3PL industry, but its Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages counts the 2 industries where most 3PL operations sit. For January to March 2026 it recorded 25,241 private freight transportation arrangement establishments and 23,848 in warehousing and storage, 49,089 in all. At the narrow end, Armstrong & Associates, the 3PL market research and advisory firm, profiles 875 3PL companies worldwide in its Who’s Who in Logistics guide.

How IBISWorld, BLS and Armstrong & Associates count 3PLs

Part of the spread is the word itself. A third-party logistics provider can be a company that stores and ships a brand’s orders, a broker that books trucks, a forwarder that moves containers across an ocean, or a fleet that drives for a single customer, and each source draws its line in a different place. The bigger difference is the unit each one counts.

Source	Unit counted	What is included	Latest figure	Period
IBISWorld	Businesses	Companies providing outsourced logistics services to clients	70,879	2026
BLS QCEW, NAICS 4885	Establishments (worksites with payroll)	Freight brokers, freight forwarders, customs brokers	25,241	Q1 2026
BLS QCEW, NAICS 493	Establishments	Warehousing and storage operators of every type	23,848	Q1 2026
Armstrong & Associates, Who’s Who	Profiled companies, worldwide	3PLs the firm has researched and written up	875	November 2025
Armstrong & Associates, M&A files	Companies, worldwide	3PLs the firm holds information on but has not profiled	3,000+	November 2025

BLS builds the QCEW from the unemployment-insurance reports employers file, so it sees every worksite with a payroll, 1 row per location. Armstrong & Associates works from the company end. Its 875 profiles cover global and regional 3PLs, digital freight brokers and forwarders, niche specialists, ecommerce fulfillment 3PLs and 3PL divisions inside larger groups, and over 87% of them are privately held. The firm says it has gathered information on more than 3,000 further 3PLs through its M&A advisory work that are not yet in the guide.

Freight arrangers and warehouses: the 2 government counts

The 2 industry codes hold very different operations. Freight transportation arrangement, NAICS 4885, is where freight brokers, freight forwarders and customs brokers file: businesses that book space on trucks, ships and planes someone else runs. Warehousing and storage, NAICS 493, holds the operators that store goods for others, which is where a fulfillment 3PL’s buildings are classified.

Headcounts show the difference. The 25,241 freight arrangement establishments employed 257,073 people in March 2026, about 10 per location. The 23,848 warehousing establishments employed 1,859,296, about 78 per location. Warehouses make up 49% of the 2 industries’ establishments but 88% of their jobs.

Carriers moved the other way over the latest year. Private trucking establishments fell 0.2% to 171,098 in the year to the first quarter of 2026, and trucking jobs fell 2.7%, while freight arrangement establishments rose 2.5% and warehousing establishments rose 3.6%. More offices are arranging freight on a slightly smaller base of truck operators.

Warehouses by type: general, refrigerated, farm product

General merchandise storage dominates. Of the 23,848 warehousing and storage establishments BLS counted in the first quarter of 2026, 18,291, or 77%, are general warehouses, and they hold 92% of warehousing jobs.

Warehouse type (NAICS)	Establishments, Q1 2026	Change on Q1 2025	Jobs, March 2026	Jobs per establishment
General warehousing and storage (493110)	18,291	+688 (+3.9%)	1,717,624	94
Other warehousing and storage (493190)	2,768	+31 (+1.1%)	54,721	20
Refrigerated warehousing and storage (493120)	1,850	+74 (+4.2%)	76,667	41
Farm product warehousing and storage (493130)	939	+41 (+4.6%)	10,284	11
All warehousing and storage (493)	23,848	+834 (+3.6%)	1,859,296	78

Cold storage is the thin category: 1,850 refrigerated establishments, 7.8% of the total and about 1 for every 10 general warehouses. Its count rose 4.2% over the year, a little ahead of general warehousing, but on so small a base that the gain was a net 74 sites across the whole country.

3PL establishments by size

Most freight arrangers are small offices. In BLS’s size data for the first quarter of 2025, 16,213 of the 24,635 freight arrangement establishments, 66%, had fewer than 5 employees, and together they held 8.6% of the industry’s jobs. Warehousing is weighted the other way: 9,270 of its 23,014 establishments (40%) had fewer than 5 employees, and they held under 1% of warehousing jobs.

Measure, Q1 2025	Freight transportation arrangement (4885)	Warehousing and storage (493)
Establishments	24,635	23,014
With fewer than 5 employees	16,213 (66%)	9,270 (40%)
Jobs in those small establishments	22,388 (8.6%)	14,318 (0.8%)
Average jobs per establishment, March	10.6	81.2

A business count gives a 2-person brokerage the same weight as a warehouse with 300 staff. A storage site with 4 people on payroll can hold pallets, but it is not picking thousands of parcel orders a day, so the share of warehousing establishments that could take on a growing ecommerce account is well below the 23,848 headline.

How the number of 3PLs has changed since 2016

Both government counts sit well above their 2016 levels. Freight arrangement establishments rose 37% from the first quarter of 2016 to the first quarter of 2026, and warehousing and storage establishments rose 42%. Warehouse jobs grew far faster than warehouse locations: March employment went from 886,935 in 2016 to 1,859,296 in 2026, up 110%.

First quarter	Freight arrangement establishments	Freight arrangement jobs (March)	Warehousing establishments	Warehousing jobs (March)
2016	18,426	208,890	16,843	886,935
2021	20,723	234,821	19,696	1,619,096
2025	24,635	261,735	23,014	1,867,765
2026	25,241	257,073	23,848	1,859,296

Warehousing and storage establishments, first quarter

• 201616,843
• 202119,696
• 202523,014
• 202623,848

Source: BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, private sector (2025 from the over-the-year change in the 2026 file)

The jobs surge came first. Between 2016 and 2021 warehousing jobs rose 83% while establishments rose 17%, so the average warehouse went from 53 workers to 82. Since 2021 the pattern has reversed, with establishments up 21% and jobs up 15%, and the average has eased to 78. The latest year added locations while shedding people in both industries: freight arrangement jobs fell 1.8% and warehousing jobs 0.5% as establishment counts rose.

IBISWorld’s business count describes a flatter market, growing 0.5% a year since 2021, against about 4% a year for both BLS establishment counts over the same 5 years. The 2 can both be right, because new buildings from existing providers raise one and leave the other alone.

The US 3PL market by service segment

Armstrong & Associates puts US 3PL gross revenue at $323.4 billion for 2025, up 5.0% on 2024. Most of that money comes from moving freight rather than storing it. Domestic transportation management brought in $128.3 billion and international transportation management $85.9 billion, together 66% of the total.

US 3PL gross revenue by segment, 2025

• Domestic transportation management$128.3B
• International transportation management$85.9B
• Warehousing and distribution (VAWD)$72.7B
• Dedicated contract carriage$32B
• Contract software and systems$4.5B

Source: Armstrong & Associates, U.S. 3PL Market Size Estimates (updated April 2026)

Warehousing and distribution, the segment A&A abbreviates VAWD and defines as contract warehousing and distribution center management, earned $72.7 billion, 22.5% of the market, and it leaves out short-term public warehousing. That is the slice a brand buys when it hires a fulfillment 3PL. Dedicated contract carriage, where the provider supplies drivers, equipment and management for 1 shipper, earned $32.0 billion.

A&A describes managed transportation as typically billed through a management fee, set per shipment or as a percentage of the freight bought, sometimes with a share of the savings. A provider that goes a step further and manages a client’s other logistics providers is what the trade calls a fourth-party logistics provider.

The largest US-based 3PL by revenue

Amazon tops A&A’s 2026 list of the 50 largest US-based 3PLs with $172.2 billion of 2025 revenue, 11.7 times the $14.8 billion of C.H. Robinson in second place. The Amazon figure is its Third-Party Seller Services segment, which mixes fulfillment and shipping fees with seller commissions; A&A estimates most of it comes from 3PL services. That revenue runs through Amazon’s own warehouse network, the same buildings that serve its retail business and the sellers using Fulfillment by Amazon. The list ranks companies by gross logistics revenue, company-reported or estimated by A&A.

How many 3PLs there are worldwide

No source counts 3PLs worldwide. A&A’s Who’s Who is the closest thing to a register of the larger ones: of its 875 profiles, 488 are 3PLs based in the Americas, 253 in Asia-Pacific and 134 in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. It added 75 profiles in 2025, 40 of them in the Americas.

Headquarters region	3PLs profiled, November 2025	Added since 2024
Americas	488	+40
Asia-Pacific	253	+21
Europe, Middle East and Africa	134	+14
Total	875	+75

By revenue, A&A’s global estimates put 3PL revenue at $1,300.6 billion in 2025, 10.0% of the $12,957.3 billion spent on logistics worldwide. Asia Pacific is the largest region at $487.5 billion, ahead of North America at $376.5 billion. The US alone, at $323.4 billion, is 24.9% of the global total by our division.

3PL revenue by region, 2025

• Asia Pacific$487.5B
• North America$376.5B
• Europe$229.7B
• Middle East$65.2B
• South America$58B
• Africa$38.8B

Source: Armstrong & Associates, Global 3PL Market Size Estimates (updated April 2026)

What the 3PL count means for a brand buying fulfillment

The 70,879 figure is not the market a brand shops in. A brand that needs stock received, stored, picked and shipped is choosing among warehouse operators, and BLS counts 23,848 warehousing establishments, which are buildings rather than companies, and in the 2025 size data 40% of them had fewer than 5 employees. The working pool shrinks again once you require multi-client fulfillment, the right temperature range and a building within a day or 2 of most of your customers. That is why comparing 3PLs across the US works building by building: what counts is how many operators run a multi-client warehouse near your customers with room for your SKUs.

Specialty storage narrows the list fastest. A brand shipping chilled or frozen goods draws on 1,850 refrigerated establishments nationwide, about 1 for every 10 general warehouses, so a metro with 30 general warehouses may have 3 cold-storage options. Fewer bidders leave less room to negotiate the storage rate per pallet, so start a cold-chain search a quarter earlier than an ambient one and budget for fewer quotes.

Building size changes how an account is served. A general warehouse averaged 94 workers in March 2026, so a brand shipping 600 orders a month is a small line in a large labor plan. Minimum monthly billing, who answers your tickets and how peak-season labor is shared between clients matter as much as the per-order fee at that size.

Freight quotes deserve the same scrutiny. Transportation management makes up $214.2 billion of the $323.4 billion US 3PL market, and freight arrangement establishments grew 2.5% in the year to early 2026 while trucking establishments shrank. When a 3PL quotes inbound containers or LTL to a retailer’s distribution center, ask whose trucks carry the load and whether the rate is the carrier’s own or a brokered rate with a margin on top. With 66% of freight arrangers running fewer than 5 staff, ask too who files the claim when a pallet arrives damaged.