With the development of international trade and transportation mode, international freight forwarding has penetrated into every field of international trade and become an indispensable part of it.

The development of logistics management has experienced three levels: distribution management, logistics management and supply chain management.

Logistics management originated from the storage and transportation mode and technology developed by the military in the Second World War. After the war, these technologies were widely used in industry, which not only greatly improved the operating efficiency of enterprises, but also won more customers for enterprises. The earliest logistics management was mainly aimed at the distribution part of enterprises. It required that after the finished products were produced, the products should be delivered to customers efficiently and quickly through the distribution center, and the minimum inventory should be maintained as far as possible.

At the initial stage, logistics management is only to transport a given number of finished products to the place designated by the customer after they are produced. It is a passive way to meet the customer's needs, to achieve optimal use of resources in the field of transportation, and to reasonably set the inventory of each distribution center. To be exact, logistics management does not really appear at this stage, it is still an incomplete form, only including transportation management, warehousing management and inventory management, and only the position of transportation manager or warehouse manager.

Logistics management in the modern sense appeared in the 1980s. It is found that it is very effective to observe, analyze and solve problems in enterprise operation by means of cross functional process management. By analyzing the entire circulation process of materials from raw materials to the factory, through each workstation of the production line, to produce finished products, then to the distribution center, and finally to the customer, enterprises can eliminate many local optimization behaviors that actually reduce the overall efficiency.

As an independent functional department, the Ministry of Transport always tries to reduce its transportation costs. However, if it delivers an order that must be expedited by sea instead of by air, it will save freight, but lose customers, leading to overall failure. Therefore, the traditional vertical function management is no longer suitable for modern large-scale industrial production, while the horizontal logistics management can comprehensively manage different functions in each process to achieve overall optimization and synergy.

At this stage, the scope of logistics management is extended to demand forecasting, procurement, production planning, inventory management, distribution and customer service, in addition to transportation, so as to systematically manage the operation of the enterprise and maximize the overall benefits.