1.1.1. Scale of Logistics Industry

Located in the eastern coastal region of China, Weifang enjoys favorable geographical conditions and natural resources with a solid industrial foundation. Leveraging local industrial characteristics and locational advantages, it has built a regional logistics hub centered on Weifang Comprehensive Bonded Zone, Weifang Port and Weifang Airport Port, providing strong support for the economic growth of Weifang and its surrounding areas.

1.1.2. Main Logistics Enterprises

By early 2026, Weifang boasted 52 logistics enterprises above Grade 3A, including 26 Grade-3A, 22 Grade-4A and 4 Grade-5A enterprises. The total mileage of highways open to traffic in Weifang reached 29,800 km, with over 3.44 million motor vehicles in stock, among which freight vehicles amounted to 137,000, ranking high across Shandong Province.

1.1.3. Logistics Infrastructure

Weifang holds prominent locational advantages in transportation, with a complete land-sea-air-rail intermodal transport system and outstanding comprehensive hub strengths. Its road network construction ranks among the top in Shandong Province, laying a solid foundation for opening-up and multimodal transport. Benefiting from sound transport conditions, Weifang features well-distributed and diversified logistics parks that host a large number of logistics enterprises with strong industrial capacity. Meanwhile, the local cold-chain logistics industry is large-scaled and well-equipped, maintaining a leading provincial-level development level and delivering solid hardware support for modern logistics.

1.2.1. Superior Geographical Location

Situated at the throat of the Shandong Peninsula, Weifang is a key city within the Shandong Peninsula Economic Circle on the southern coast of the Bohai Sea. Its favorable geographic position and convenient transport conditions underpin the development of modern logistics [1]. Located at the intersection of the Yellow River Delta High-efficiency Eco-economic Zone, the Shandong Peninsula High-end Industrial Cluster and the Shandong Peninsula Blue Economic Zone, Weifang offers favorable conditions for logistics industry growth.

1.2.2. Solid Economic Foundation

Weifang has a complete industrial system and robust economic base. In 2025, its regional GDP exceeded 858.736 billion yuan, representing a 5.5% year-on-year increase at constant prices. Multiple industries including industry and agriculture work synergistically, creating a sound market environment and development space for large-scale and specialized upgrading of local logistics enterprises.

1.2.3. Strong Policy Support

Weifang has rolled out policies such as the Action Plan for High-quality Development of “Three-zone Integration” in Weifang (2024 - 2026) and the Work Plan for Deep Integration of Express Delivery and Manufacturing Industries in Weifang (2025 - 2027). Through policy incentives, the city attracts enterprises to settle in, promotes effective allocation of online and offline resources, boosts industrial large-scale development, and lays a solid foundation for the green-oriented growth of logistics.

The target population consisted of transportation-oriented logistics enterprises within Weifang City. Respondents were enterprise managers, operation supervisors or key business staff who were familiar with corporate logistics operations. Eligibility criteria required that enterprises were legally registered and actively operating in Weifang. Enterprises purely engaged in warehousing or courier terminal outlets were excluded. Respondents were expected to provide authentic information about their firms. The sampling frame covered all transportation-related logistics entities across every district and county of Weifang, including A-grade large-scale logistics enterprises, small-and-medium private logistics firms and individual logistics operators. Enterprises were recruited through mixed online‑offline approaches. Online questionnaires were distributed via industry associations and enterprise communities using Wenjuanxing. Offline paper questionnaires were distributed by field visits to logistics parks, freight markets and key logistics enterprises. A total of 317 transportation-oriented logistics enterprises were contacted. Questionnaires went through multi-stage screening: responses with extremely short completion time or uniform selections were removed; questionnaires from closed or non-transport-oriented enterprises were excluded. Finally, 252 valid questionnaires were obtained. The overall response rate was 79.49%, and the valid response rate reached 100%. The research was conducted in 2025 targeting transportation-oriented logistics enterprises. A combined online-offline approach was adopted to cover diverse logistics enterprises. Online questionnaires were distributed via the Wenjuanxing platform to transportation-logistics enterprises across districts and counties of Weifang. Offline field investigations were implemented among key local transportation-logistics enterprises, with paper questionnaires distributed to on-site staff to guarantee accuracy and completeness. A total of 252 questionnaires were collected, all of which were valid, achieving a valid response rate of 100%. A total of 252 valid questionnaires were obtained in this survey. Samples were distributed across districts and counties of Weifang: 41 from Kuiwen District, 38 from Weicheng District, 32 from Hanting District, 29 from Fangzi District, 36 from Shouguang City, 34 from Zhucheng City, 27 from Qingzhou City, 15 from Anqiu City, 18 from Changyi City, and 12 from Linqu County. The sampling frame covered all transportation-oriented logistics enterprises in each district and county of Weifang. The eligibility criteria required participating enterprises to be in normal operation, and respondents to be enterprise managers or business persons-in-charge. Samples were collected via a mixed online-offline approach, including 140 online questionnaires and 112 offline paper-based questionnaires. During data processing, all duplicate questionnaires were eliminated. Questionnaires with substantial missing key information were discarded directly. For items with only minor isolated missing values, calibration was conducted by referring to similar samples. No questionnaires were excluded in this process, and 252 valid samples were retained in the final dataset.

2.2.1. Basic Enterprise-Level Information

As shown in Figure 1(a), in terms of operating years, enterprises with more than 8-year operating history account for 38.49%, and those with 5 - 8 years of operation account for 24.21%. Together they make up over 60%, indicating strong stickiness among existing industry participants. Enterprises operating for 3 - 5 years account for 21.43%, while newly-established enterprises with less than 3-year history take up 15.87%. New market players keep entering the market, forming a multi-level competitive landscape.

As shown in Figure 1(b), from the perspective of enterprise ownership structure, the industry is dominated by private-market entities. Private enterprises occupy 70.63% and constitute the core participants of the industry; joint-stock enterprises account for 12.70% with advantages in large-scale and standardized operation; individual-owned businesses make up 9.52%, flexibly covering grassroots freight-transport markets; other types of enterprises total 5.16%. State-owned and state-holding enterprises only account for 1.98%, with no foreign-funded or Sino-foreign joint-venture logistics enterprises. The whole industry presents a highly-marketized pattern featured by private-economy dominance, low participation of state‑owned capital and absence of foreign investment.

(a) Operating years of logistics-related enterprises

(b) Ownership distribution of surveyed enterprises

Figure 1. Basic information of surveyed enterprises.

2.2.2. Talents Status of Logistics Enterprises

As shown in Figure 2(a), regarding talent shortages, surveyed enterprises mainly lack talents for comprehensive management and transportation management posts, accounting for 39.68% and 36.9% respectively, which reflects enterprises’ high priority on core freight-transport operations. Demands for talents of logistics information management and marketing management rank second, at 27.38 % and 23.02%, matching the digital-oriented and market-driven development trend of the industry. Demands for specialized talents in international logistics, supply-chain design and special-operation businesses are relatively low. Meanwhile, 27.78% of enterprises report talent shortages in other positions.

As shown in Figure 2(b), In terms of talent training modes, internal corporate training serves as the primary approach, reaching 82.94%. Staff participating in social training on their own take up 38.89%. Enterprises subsidizing employees to obtain professional certifications or participate in external exchanges account for 25.79%. Targeted special-fund subsidized training occupies 18.25%. Other customized training modes add up to merely 12.7%. On the whole, internal corporate training acts as the core channel for talent improvement, supplemented by external learning. This parameter allows multiple responses for image data.

(a) Types of badly-needed logistics talents in enterprises

(b) Modes adopted by enterprises for logistics-talent training

Figure 2. Talent status of logistics enterprise.

2.2.3. Infrastructure Status of Enterprises

As shown in Figure 3, statistics on warehousing-operation modes reveal that manual operation still prevails in this industry. 76.59% of enterprises rely purely on manual labor. 16.27% of enterprises are equipped with basic mechanical equipment, whereas information-flow processing still depends on manual work. Only 3.97% of enterprises realize mechanical operations combined with informatized management, and merely 3.17% achieve fully-automatic unmanned warehousing. The automation-intelligent warehousing mode requires high upfront capital, technical and management thresholds. The whole industry sees slow progress in automation upgrading with prominent transformation barriers. This parameter allows multiple responses for image data.

Figure 3. Warehouse-operation modes of enterprises.

As shown in Figure 4, Among logistics information technologies and equipment adopted by enterprises, Beidou and GPS positioning devices have the highest utilization rate of 85.32%. The adoption rate of TMS (Transportation Management System) reaches 11.9%. Bar-code and WMS (Warehouse Management System) are applied by merely 3.97% and 3.17% of enterprises respectively. Advanced technologies such as EOS, EDI and RFID enjoy even lower popularization rates. Besides, 11.9% of enterprises have not deployed any professional logistics-information equipment. On the whole, enterprises show obvious polarization in the application of informatization tools, and the overall full-process digital-construction level remains relatively low. This parameter allows multiple responses for image data.

Figure 4. Logistics-information technologies and equipment adopted by enterprises.

2.2.4. Business-Environment Status of Enterprises

Factors influencing the business environment of transportation-oriented logistics enterprises are illustrated in Figure 5 below. Market standardization exerts the greatest impact, accounting for 50%, which highlights the significance of regulating market order. The perfection level of public logistics-information platforms accounts for 42.46%, indicating its considerable influence on enterprise operation. The construction of policy-law systems takes up 32.14%, reflecting the critical impact of policy-regulatory environment. Policy-oriented supporting measures including logistics infrastructure, land supply, tax and fiscal subsidies each occupy 17.86%. Logistics standardization accounts for 14.68%, and administrative-service efficiency accounts for 12.3%. All these factors affect enterprise operation to varying degrees. Other factors account for 18.25 %. Therefore, market conditions, information platforms and policies-regulations constitute the key factors shaping the business environment of transportation-oriented logistics enterprises.

Figure 5. Environmental factors perceived by enterprises to influence their business operation.

This analysis is based on a sample of 252 transportation-oriented logistics enterprises. Due to survey constraints, conclusions in this paper are limited to the surveyed firms rather than generalized to the whole logistics industry of Weifang. Respondent-level profile data from questionnaires were not compared against existing administrative or official statistical management data for Weifang logistics enterprises. Findings only reflect conditions among participating transportation-logistics firms. Caution should be exercised when extrapolating results to the full population of logistics enterprises across the city. According to the above-mentioned survey results, the surveyed subjects are mainly private-owned, joint-stock and individual-run logistics entities, with low proportion of state-owned capital and no foreign-funded enterprises. The business entities are fragmented, featuring scattered-small-disorder problems, insufficient resource integration and inadequate leading-enterprise driving effects. In terms of talents, enterprises are in urgent need of professionals for comprehensive logistics management, transportation, informatization and marketing. There exists disconnection between school-enterprise talent training and imperfect internal corporate training systems, creating heavy pressure on retaining local talents. In terms of facilities and operation, the overall utilization rate of enterprise vehicles and warehouses is acceptable, yet warehousing operations still rely heavily on manual labor. Transformation toward mechanization, automation and digitalization lags behind, and the penetration rate of advanced logistics information systems remains low. Enterprises are deficient in capacity for peak-hour operation and refined management. From the business-environment perspective, cut-throat low-price competition prevails; public logistics-information platforms are functionally incomplete, with low cargo-vehicle matching efficiency. Inconsistent supporting policies and supervision standards further raise operating costs and development uncertainties for enterprises. The whole industry still has substantial room for improvement in large-scale, intelligent and standardized development.

The development of logistics industry involves multiple sectors and administrative departments including development-reform, transportation, postal and commerce authorities, each undertaking partial logistics-related functions without unified responsibilities for logistics-industry governance [2]. In practice, development-reform departments take the lead in modern-logistics development, drafting industrial policies, making plans and organizing implementation. Transportation departments are only responsible for approving road-transport permits and freight terminals, with ambiguous management authority over logistics parks. Express-delivery businesses are administered by postal authorities, yet no subordinate branches are set at county-district level. This leads to mismatched authority-responsibility among logistics-related departments, poor communication, tendency to focus on macro-level work while neglecting micro-level management of logistics parks and enterprises, and failure to form joint development forces.

Most logistics enterprises in Weifang still focus on traditional transportation and warehousing businesses, with single service functions and lack of value-added-service capacity. They can hardly satisfy diversified and personalized demands of modern-logistics markets, which severely restricts the overall radiation-service capacity and regional competitiveness of Weifang’s modern-logistics industry.

Some logistics parks are built on a small scale with uneven management levels. Duplicated construction of park projects and poor information exchange are common, resulting in severe disordered competition among parks and enterprises. Such conditions constrain the large-scale, industrialized, specialized and intelligent development of Weifang logistics enterprises, downgrading logistics-service quality and market competitiveness, and placing Weifang’s logistics industry in a relatively disadvantaged position in regional competition.

Rapid growth of transportation-logistics industry generates growing demand for professional talents. Nevertheless, the shortage of specialized logistics talents remains prominent in Weifang.

For one thing, the logistics industry provides relatively poor working conditions and compensation packages, with limited attractiveness to high-quality talents. Logistics enterprises struggle to recruit professionals equipped with modern-logistics concepts, advanced-logistics technologies and management experience.

For another, the setup of logistics-related majors and teaching quality in local colleges and vocational institutes need improvement. Dislocation exists between talent cultivation and market demands, failing to deliver sufficient professional personnel for industrial development.

The shortage of specialized talents hinders innovative development and management upgrading of Weifang logistics enterprises, and to some extent impedes the highquality progress of logistics industry [3].

In the field of warehousing infrastructure, existing warehousing facilities in Weifang cannot fully meet the demands of social-economic development, marked by lagging informatization and automation.

The overall development level of logistics equipment stays low. Manual handling still dominates cargo operation. Modern equipment such as electric forklifts and AGV robots are insufficient. Except for a small number of large-scale enterprises deploying high-performance logistics equipment, third-party-logistics and comprehensive-logistics enterprises generally lack matched professional equipment, which greatly constrains operational efficiency.

From the perspective of management technology and standardization, the coverage rate of intelligent warehouse-management systems among Weifang logistics enterprises is low. Cargo storage and sorting still rely on manual work, making real-time inventory monitoring and efficient scheduling difficult. Meanwhile, logistics standardization is inadequate. Equipment specifications for different transport modes lack unified standards, causing poor connection among warehousing, transportation and distribution links, low collaboration efficiency of logistics elements, rising overall operational costs and weakened industrial competitiveness.

Weifang’s transportation-logistics market faces multiple development dilemmas. From the perspective of industrial administration, market development is still immature with regulatory blind spots. Effective industrial-management systems and operational mechanisms under market-economy conditions have not been established, supported by incomplete legal systems and deficient credit systems.

In terms of market order, the transportation market suffers from disordered competition and non-standard business behaviors, resulting in uneven service quality. Meanwhile, the logistics industry lacks unified service standards, which raises enterprises’ management costs and intensifies inter-enterprise competition. Especially for small-and-medium-sized enterprises, narrow financing channels and insufficient legal support weaken their capacity to resist industrial risks, and they may even face bankruptcy risks.

Enhance the overall coordination capacity of the logistics industry. Establish a municipal-level logistics-industry development group to conduct comprehensive supervision and guide local logistics businesses, including the implementation of technological upgrading and standardization as well as the popularization of information technology, and formulate specifications for the logistics industry. Furthermore, it is necessary to clearly define and accurately divide responsibility domains and adjust the existing industrial-management structure for higher efficiency and pertinence. Joint efforts shall be made to promote the development of modern logistics. Meanwhile, further clarify and refine power-responsibility boundaries, straighten out industrial-management mechanisms, optimize government functions, integrate policy resources from all parties, and coordinate the sound development of modern logistics [4].

Restructure the logistics-industry layout. Focus on cultivating leading enterprises, with local logistics enterprises above Grade-3A as key targets. By means of high-end resource injection, alliance-based development and complementary-logistics-enterprise restructuring, promote their merger, acquisition and reorganization of small-sized, scattered and weak local logistics enterprises. Cultivate a number of “chain-leading” enterprises with market influence to raise industrial concentration. Strengthen planning and coordination of logistics parks, arrange logistics parks rationally to avoid duplicated construction and resource waste. Promote functional upgrading of existing logistics parks, improve supporting facilities and enhance park attractiveness and capacity. Encourage cooperation among parks to realize information and resource sharing, build logistics-park alliances to jointly undertake large-scale logistics projects, and lift overall competitiveness.

To satisfy logistics enterprises’ demand for high-end talents, Weifang shall make efforts in both talent cultivation and talent introduction.

Strengthen logistics-major construction in colleges and vocational institutes. Make full use of local educational resources, add supply-chain-management majors, optimize curriculum systems and strengthen practical-teaching sessions. Set up practical-training bases and carry out school-enterprise cooperation including order-oriented classes to cultivate application-oriented talents precisely. Give full play to industry-association roles, integrate training resources from universities and enterprises, and provide all-round re-education covering management, operation and informatization for practitioners.

Step up the introduction of professional logistics talents. Formulate preferential policies concerning housing and research funds to attract outstanding domestic and foreign talents for employment and entrepreneurship. Meanwhile, strengthen regular training and vocational-skill appraisal for existing practitioners to improve their professional competence and comprehensive quality. In this way, sufficient talent support can be guaranteed for transportation-logistics development in Weifang, and sustainable innovative growth of the logistics industry can be promoted.

Driven by new-generation information technology, Weifang shall boost high-quality development of modern logistics through overall planning and multi-dimensional innovation.

Integrate cutting-edge technologies to develop smart logistics. Adopt artificial-intelligence technologies such as machine learning to build an intelligent logistics-management system covering warehousing management, transportation scheduling and terminal distribution. Realize dynamic allocation of warehousing-storage space and real-time optimization of transportation routes. Actively encourage enterprises to explore innovative business forms such as automatic handling and unmanned distribution. Improve smart-logistics platforms and industrial-standard systems to serve the manufacturing industry. innovative business forms such as unmanned distribution. Improve smart-logistics platforms and industrial‑standard systems to provide precise and flexible supply-chain services for the manufacturing industry. Encourage commercial and logistics enterprises to deepen collaboration through long-term agreements and equity cooperation, promote the transformation of traditional enterprises into integrated supply-chain service providers, and standardize the development of supply-chain financial services.

Realize logistics-information sharing and build smart platforms. Relying on smart-logistics platforms, Weifang constructs a smart-logistics ecosystem integrating physical-goods flow, information flow, capital flow, tax flow and credit flow [5]. It builds a full-chain business system covering enterprise big-data platform operation, promotes information exchange and resource sharing among logistics parks, improves logistics-intelligence level and supply-chain management efficiency, guides industrial large-scale development, and realizes industrial linkage, city-industry integration and regional coordinated development.

To boost the sound development of the transportation-logistics market, joint efforts shall be made in market supervision, safety control and credit-system construction.

In terms of market supervision, laws, regulations and digital technologies shall be comprehensively adopted to build an intelligent-supervision platform. Big-data and Internet-of-Things technologies are applied to monitor market dynamics in real time and handle abnormal events promptly, so as to foster a fair, just and orderly competitive market environment.

For safety management, modern technical means including Beidou positioning and video monitoring are adopted to implement 24-hour dynamic safety monitoring for express-passenger transport, logistics-transport and hazardous-goods‑transport vehicles, realizing closed-loop whole-process management of risk early-warning and emergency response. As for the credit system, safety records and credit ratings shall serve as core assessment criteria. Strict access thresholds will be enforced for enterprises, and the scale of scattered individual operators will be reasonably regulated. Meanwhile, multi-dimensional market exit mechanisms such as credit evaluation and safety assessment shall be established and improved. Enterprises with violations and bad credit records will be eliminated in accordance with laws and regulations, so as to form a sound market ecosystem of survival-of-the-fittest.