The transportation-and-logistics (T&L) sector has benefitted from many of the most important business trends of the past half century.  Globalization, the evolution of sophisticated just-in-time supply chains, and the rise of e-commerce have all helped the sector grow at a rate broadly similar to the overall economy. But it hasn’t all been smooth sailing. Economic downturns tend to hit the sector particularly hard. Our analysis(Mckinsey) of the past five US recessions shows that T&L companies suffer more on average than the economy as a whole. As in all industries, sector averages don’t tell the whole story. Some companies ride out downturns much more successfully than others. When McKinsey analyzed the performance of around 1000 large, publicly traded companies through the 2007-2008 global recession, we identified a subgroup of “resilient” organizations that outperformed their peers by a significant margin over the cycle.  The performance of these co...