Purpose- The purpose of this research is to explore the role of road transport in logistics operations, and to investigate and analyze how IKEA China does operate on road transport in logistics operations.

Design/methodology/approach- A single case study has been conducted at IKEA China, including semi-structured interviews and review of internal documents. Along with the case study, literature reviews have been conducted within the areas of efficient road transport in logistics operations.

Findings- The IKEA China case suggests that the logistics operations should have strong link to the efficient road transport in a manner optimized logistics operations can provide efficient road transport with less cost.

Research limitations/implications- This thesis is limited to one representative company, and the authors just focus on a study of efficient road transport in logistics operations for narrowing down the thesis. So the solutions and proposals about efficient road transport might not be adopted by other companies or be applied to other parts of the supply chain.

Additionally, a study of efficient road transport can be discussed, analyzed and studied from a lot of different perspectives, even much better in a holistic viewpoint. Here, the authors just choose a few primary perspectives as research objectives to support this study, which concerns the data and information collected from IKEA China. Finally, because of the limitation of time and personal knowledge, the data collected from IKEA China may neither abundant enough nor deep enough in a manner without exploiting and expanding into all the issues and challenges refers to efficient road transport in logistics operations.

Practical implication- This research provides suitable solutions for a company towards efficient road transport in logistics operations. Consequently, it will facilitate companies to achieve the purpose of efficient road transport by optimizing their logistics operations in a manner improve the outcomes of insouring/outsourcing, merge-in-transit, consolidation point and packaging.

Originality/value- This research combines five theoretical fields in terms of sourcing strategy, merge-in-transit, consolidation point, packaging as well as economics scale of trucking cost to contribute proposals to efficient road transport in logistics operations.

Keywords Efficient road transport, Logistics operations, cost