Freight transportation systems play a critical role in society, serving as an analog of the human body's "circulatory system,” moving the goods produced by today's often-global supply chain systems. Supply chain systems are a key enabler of our modern economic system, and are designed to allow the goods that sustain and enrich society to be produced efficiently and transported to consumers all over the world.

Supply chains in turn rely heavily on efficient and effective freight transportation systems. Freight systems include both long-haul transport designed to move freight between industrial supply chain facilities, by ocean vessels, aircraft, freight railroads, and trucks; and also so-called last-mile systems providing freight connections into retail outlets, and increasingly, directly to consumers at their homes, places of work, or other convenient locations.

O.R. and analytics is a key enabler of effective freight transportation systems, and researchers in these fields are helping to build the capability for these systems to efficiently and sustainably deploy resources to meet demands. The ongoing revolution in communications and information technology has provided a rich data environment within which to provide planning and control decision support for freight systems, and approaches that can effectively manage significant data uncertainty and/or dynamism are especially important.

We are pleased to bring you this volume of Editor's Cut on Fueling Transportation with Analytics and Technology; it is an exciting time for anyone interested in transportation. With companies like Amazon constantly seeking to enhance the experience of online shoppers and aiming to provide nearly-instant gratification with very short delivery times, the last-mile transportation environment, especially, has given rise to many truly exciting and novel transportation research problems.

At the same time, companies like Uber are entering the freight transportation space and spearheading the influence of the so-called sharing economy on transportation. In addition, there are the technological advances related to autonomous vehicles, such as self-driving cars and trucks and aerial drones, which are promising to provide new ways to deliver consumer goods, and have the potential to revolutionize freight transportation.

For this Editor's Cut, we are bringing together a variety of interesting resources for those who want to learn more about freight transportation. We provide research articles focused on the challenges in the design, planning, and control of the critical freight transportation modes: road, rail, and ocean. We provide links to visions and analysis by companies pushing the boundaries of freight transportation. We point to websites of government organizations responsible for providing regulatory oversight to transportation systems, both in the U.S. and Europe: https://www.transportation.gov, https://www.transportation.gov/BeyondTraffic, http://ec.europa.eu/transport/home_en, 2011 Europa White Paper, http://transport-research.info/web/about/index.cfm.

We also highlight research examples in the freight transportation area that have been recognized by INFORMS as achievements that demonstrate the tremendous value analytics and O.R. projects can bring to organizations.

This material highlights the impactful transportation research that has been conducted in the past, and will focus your attention on what is exciting and innovative in transportation research. Freight transportation has, and will remain, an area where operations researchers and analytics professionals have a chance to drive innovation and improve our society and quality of life.