Transportation cost is majorly a factor in physical distribution of manufactured products and
logistics management. Since products are not produced and consumed at the same location,
transportation is therefore inevitable. The concern of this paper is however to examine the
relationship between aggregate manufacturing and transportation costs of the manufacturing
companies with a view to justify outsourcing transportation to third party logistics service
provider. Similarly, the study predicted the relationship between number of fleets outsourced
by the manufacturing companies and the distance covered as a yardstick for the sales of the
products per aggregated period of time. In order to carry out this investigation, the researchers
used the collected data with converted cumulative aggregates of transportation cost and
approximated estimate of their manufacturing costs from Manufacturers Association of
Nigeria’s data bank. Secondly, the combined number of fleets, distance covered per fleet were
also traced and recorded. Pearson Product Moment Correlation was used to determine the
relationship between cost of manufacturing products and transporting same because they are
continuous variables while multiple regression was used to determine the relationship among
sales, number of fleets and distance covered. Results showed that the null hypothesis of no
relationship between manufacturing and transportation costs should be accepted and alternate
be rejected. R2 value of 67.2% of sales of products by the manufacturing companies is
responsible by the combine effects of outsourced fleet with the distance covered to distribute
the product. The research concluded that, the more the distance covered;coverage, the more
the sales for the manufacturing companies. Future research can separate outbound and
inbound logistics cost and determine their effects on manufacturing costs or investigate the
challenges of fleet management companies in a bid to satisfy manufacturing companies in
Nigeria