Shufeng Logistics digitizes multimodal operations — road, rail, waterway, and last mile on one platform

Multimodal is harder than it looks

If you’ve ever shipped a container that moves through a rail yard onto a truck and then onto a river barge, you know the problem isn’t any individual leg — it’s the handoffs between legs. Each mode has its own documents, its own rhythms, its own system of record. Most logistics companies end up running 3-5 separate operational systems, one per mode, and hiring people whose entire job is to reconcile them.

Shufeng is one of the few Chinese logistics operators that built its business around multimodal integration — road, rail, waterway, urban distribution — as a differentiated service proposition. That strategic choice made the operating system selection mission-critical: a TMS that treats “other modes” as a second-class bolt-on would have actively undermined their service model.

What NiuInfo deployed

The platform was designed around NiuInfo’s full-scenario freight philosophy — explicitly covering every mode Shufeng operates:

• FTL (full truckload) for trunk moves.
• Dedicated lane for scheduled point-to-point service.
• LTL (less-than-truckload) for distribution.
• Urban delivery for last-mile and same-city.
• Road-rail-water combined transport as a first-class workflow — not an afterthought.

Order management, warehouse operations, transport execution, and settlement all run on the same core. For Shufeng’s operators, that translates to a unified picture of every shipment regardless of how many modes it touches — with the platform handling the leg-to-leg handoffs that used to require human tracking.

Why this matters for international multimodal operators

If your business depends on orchestrating multiple transport modes — especially in regions where rail, inland waterway, and short-sea combine with road freight — two lessons transfer directly from Shufeng:

• Treat multimodal as an architecture, not a feature. Systems that bolt rail or waterway capability onto a road-first TMS will leave you reconciling handoffs manually. Look for a platform where every mode shares the same core data model and the same operational surface.
• Pick a platform that scales with your scenario mix. Shufeng’s business is not static — the mix of modes shifts as customer demand and infrastructure evolve. The platform investment that matters is one that absorbs those shifts without rework.