We adopted the simple average Divisia index approach to explore the impacts of factors on the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from road freight transportation in China from 1985 to 2007. CO2 emissions were investigated using the following as influencing factors: the emission coefficient, vehicle fuel intensity, working vehicle stock per freight transport operator, market concentration level, freight transportation distance, market share of road freight transportation, ton-kilometer per value added of industry, industrialization level and economic growth. Building on the results, we suggest that economic growth is the most important factor in increasing CO2 emissions, whereas the ton-kilometer per value added of industry and the market concentration level contribute significantly to decreasing CO2 emissions. We also discussed some recent important policies concerning factors contained in the decomposition model. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.