4. Conclusion

For engineers and managers alike, the transport business raises a host of questions. An ancient and universal activity, so closely interwoven with all the others as to be partially immersed in the companies of the other branches under the own-account system, but increasingly outsourced to specialized service providers, transport is by no means trivial: it is a well-identified technical field, with intense progress affecting all the elements of its system.

In terms of organization, the transport sector has contrasting characteristics. Socially, it is still an archaic sector, where productivity is often based on rudimentary forms of efficiency, sometimes beyond regulatory limits. At the same time, logistics, conceived as flow management, has lifted transport out of its status as a subordinate technique, or "ancillary" as it has often been called, putting it back at...