Innovative freight transport prospects review: spotlight on crowd-shipping and research directions

A variety of innovative freight distribution schemes is under current investigation in many contexts worldwide, with both theoretical and practical contributions – e.g.: collaborative logistics, integration of passengers and freight, crowd-shipping, cargo-hitching, as-a-service frameworks – attempting to deploy more effective ways to optimise freight transport and maximise usage of existing capacity of freight and passenger networks. Notwithstanding, there is still need for a systematisation of the existing literature and for a taxonomy of underlying concepts and definitions. In this respect, the contribution proposes a synoptic analysis, to understand better the field of action in which these concepts are being developed, categorised according to certain variables of belonging, and proposes a definition of freight-as-a-service (FaaS) framework, disentangling its overlapping with logistics-as-a-service (LaaS) and crowd-shipping.