The impact of emerging technologies on freight transportation in the digital era: trends, themes, and research opportunities

PurposeWith various challenges in the digital era, stakeholders are expressing growing interests in understanding the impact of the emerging technologies on freight transportation. The purpose of this paper is to fill the existing research gap by exploring the current merging technologies taking place in the logistics industry and analyze their impact on freight transportation.Design/methodology/approachSix representative recent articles from academic, industrial, and governmental perspectives are investigated to elect nine emerging technologies, which are then used as keywords to conduct a systematic literature review covering the literature in the past ten years.Findings3D Printing, Artificial Intelligence, Automated Robots, Autonomous Vehicles, Big Data Analytics, Blockchain, Drones, Electric Vehicles, and Internet of Things are identified as emerging technologies. The state-of-the-art of the current research and potential future opportunities are then analyzed.Research limitations/implicationsThe research could support various stakeholders to better capture the current status of and the future opportunities in freight transportation.Original/valueThe paper fills a gap in the literature on the impacts of emerging technologies on freight transportation