The purpose of this paper is to investigatethe role of hauliers in the literature dealing with decarbonizing road freight transport, especially with focus on electrification. The literature review was guided by the following research question: How have road hauliers’ and related logistics actors’ perspectives been included in literature when it comes to freight transport electrification?

In our understanding, hauliers as a group of actors can be described as the core of the road freight transport system as they both perform the physical transport and own transport resources, i.e. vehicles. The majority of hauliers are small companies owning a few trucks and often serve as subcontractors to larger freight forwarders or logistics service providers (LSPs). In literature, the term LSP or freight forwarder sometimes includes hauliers and no clear distinction is made between them. In this paper, we will make this distinction and focus on the haulier’s dedicated role in the transport system, which is physical transport and vehicle ownership. It is the definition of the haulier’s role rather than the term “haulier” itself that forms the basis for how we conducted our literature search.