Capacity

3PL

Third-Party Logistics provider. A company contracted to run all or part of another business's logistics: warehousing, fulfillment, transportation, sometimes returns. Sits between a shipper and the carriers.

Where this fits

Capacity comes in many shapes. Internal drivers, contracted carriers, gig couriers, autonomous units. Nash treats them as one pool ranked by the rules you set so each order goes to the option that best matches its promise instead of a static default.

Related terms

Carrier: Any entity that physically moves freight or parcels. National parcel carriers (UPS, FedEx, USPS), regional carriers, specialist carriers. Distinct from a 3PL, which manages logistics on top of carrier capacity.
Courier: A single driver or small operator running point-to-point or on-demand deliveries. Often local; often gig.
DSP: Delivery Service Partner. The contracted last-mile operator model made famous by Amazon: independent businesses that run branded vehicles and drivers exclusively for one shipper.
Gig courier: An independent driver dispatched per delivery through a marketplace (Uber, Roadie, Senpex, others). On-demand capacity that flexes with demand without taking on payroll.
Vehicles: The physical units a delivery rides in: vans, trucks, e-bikes, motorcycles, drones, autonomous pods. In Nash, every vehicle is a tracked asset with capacity (cubes, weight, temperature class) and constraints (cold chain, regulated cargo, restricted zones) the dispatch engine reads against every job.