1PL, 2PL, 3PL, 4PL, 5PL ???

There is clearly a lot of confusion in the industry around these acronyms, what they stand for and what they mean in practice.  I was surprised to see the 5PL term used by a WMS vendor I was looking at and as I searched the net to see how many other people had started to use this term I stumbled upon an old Times of India article that illustrates the confusion and even found a transport company branding themselves as a 5PL.

Seriously? This is a case of