Sustainable freight transportation (SFT) and cold-chain for perishable food products are the two most prominent areas where research is tremendously growing with increasing number of publications in various reputed journals. The area of SFT for perishable products is still in the nascent stage and not much explored. There are a number of published articles in the cold chain, but only a few have addressed the issue of sustainability. Perishable products require careful handling throughout their supply chain, which often requires reefer vehicles and cold storage facilities. They need to move fast in the supply chain as their longer stay would cause more energy consumption and higher perishability losses leading to increased cost and carbon footprints. The paper analyzes existing literature on this vital problem area and attempts to derive valuable insights using a structured approach termed as literature review analytics, which involves bibliometric and network analytics. This review analyzes the articles published during 1985–2017 using a set of keywords. Some of the key findings of this study unveil (1) research on SFT of perishable items is growing rapidly; (2) among all, Italy followed by the United States is the most contributing country in this research area. Further, network analytics is used to analyze the co-occurrence network for authors and keywords. © 2018, Operational Research Society of India.