The findings, drawn from a 2026 survey of more than 1,000 supply chain, transport and logistics decision-makers at UK companies with annual turnovers above £100m, form the first of three reports under the banner The Future of Transport. They paint a picture of an industry where cost pressure is intensifying, investment is rising, but meaningful transformation remains out of reach for many operators. The proportion of respondents reporting higher costs due to transport logistics inefficiency has also grown, from 26% in 2024 to 36% this year — a ten-percentage-point jump that GXO says points to a structural problem rather than a cyclical one. Alongside the customer and cost impacts, around a quarter of respondents said they had faced penalties linked to contractual failures, just under a quarter said they had missed key sales periods such as Christmas, and more than a fifth said their market reputation had declined. Costs expected to keep rising Nearly nine in ten respondents (89%) expect logistics operating costs to increase over the next 12 months, including 37% who expect them to rise significantly. More than half — 52% — agreed that logistics decisions are driven purely by cost. Cost anxiety is particularly acute in consumer-facing and highly regulated sectors. In FMCG and fashion and apparel, 96% of respondents expect transport costs to rise over the coming year. The figure is 95% in healthcare, 93% in defence and aerospace, 90% in construction, and 89% in both IT and telecoms and packaging and manufacturing. Carl Hanson, Managing Director, Transport at GXO UK&I, said the role of a 3PL in this environment is to give customers the tools to control cost rather than simply absorb it. “The opportunity lies in identifying the true cost of inefficiency, including underutilised fleet capacity, suboptimal routing, fragmented networks and poor visibility,” he