Who controls the fleet? Initial insights into road freight transport planning and control from an industrial network perspective

Research in logistics and supply chain management typically considers transport activities between shippers (sender), carriers (transport operators) and customers (recipient). However, a closer look into real-world road freight transport systems reveals more complex constellations involving multiple actors with different functions, leading to a fragmentation of transport planning and control activities and accordingly inefficient execution of road freight transport. The purpose of this paper is to pinpoint and explore the gap between supply chain transport theory and empirical reality in road freight transport control. In order to empirically indicate the complexity of control of road freight transport in supply chains, descriptive statistics of fleet two in-depth case studies were conducted. Our finding is that several nested levels of planning and control have to be managed and our results underline the perception that previous approaches of transport planning and control are suitable for simple governance structures but do not cover complex multiple-actor constellations.