Road transportation can be divided into direct transportation, trunk transportation and short distance distribution transportation. Therefore, road transportation has the functions of "through" transportation, "delivery" or "collection and distribution", especially "delivery" or "collection and distribution", as the terminal transportation mode of other transportation modes (excluding pipelines), is an indispensable part of transportation and plays a very important role in the comprehensive transportation system. With the development of expressway to network scale, road transportation, as a transportation system with complete functions ("through" and "delivery" or "collection and distribution"), plays an increasingly important role by using the trunk transportation function of expressway.
Compared with other modes of transportation, road transportation is characterized by flexibility, especially the development of highway construction, information network, communication technology and computer technology. It also realizes the fast "door to door" transportation and the transportation characteristic called zero inventory, which promotes the rapid development of road transportation.
The flexibility and rapidity of road transportation are mainly reflected in the flexibility of batch, transportation conditions, time and service, and the rapidity of time. Due to the small volume of road transportation and relatively loose transportation conditions, it is easy to guarantee the transportation time and service level. Because of this, road transport has the characteristics of a wide range of production sites.