Road freight transport efficiency and less environmental impact - the perspectives of transport buyers and operators

Purpose of this paper: The purpose of this article is to describe and compare the transport buyers’ and transport providers’ views of challenges when improving transports efficiency and reducing environmental impact from freight transport. By investigating perspectives of the actor groups, an increased understanding of different viewpoints is made and factors that are of importance for improving transport efficiency and reducing environmental impact are identified. The role of the actors and especially what could be expected from each actor is discussed. Design/methodology/approach: The empirical findings have been collected through semi-structured interviews and two focus groups. The target groups have been two main actors in the logistics system; transport providers and transport buyers in Sweden. Grounded theory has been used for analyzing the data. The focus is road transports and its interface to other transport modes. Both long distance transports and short distance distribution have been included. Findings: Competence and resources, Knowledge and information, Demands, Service and offers, Follow up environmental goals and Priority of transport are identified as important factors. The transport buyers need to raise the focus of transport and environment in order to better understand the effects of transport in the system while the transport providers need to be innovative and proactive in order to find business models that steer towards both efficient and sustainable transports. What is original/value of paper: The interface between transport buyer and transport provider has shown to be poorly studied before. This article provides input to a more holistic approach when improving the logistics system towards an efficient and environmentally preferable direction