An integer programming model and directed Steiner-forest based heuristic for routing less-than-truckload freight

Srinivas Subramanya Tamvada, Bahareh Mansouri, Elkafi Hassini and Theodore Pribytkov

International Journal of Production Economics, 2021, vol. 232, issue C

Abstract: Less-than-truckload (LTL) freight transportation is a vital part of Canada’s economy, with revenues running into billions of dollars and a cascading impact on many other industries. LTL operators have to deal with large volumes of shipments and uncertainty in demand patterns. In an industry that already has low profit margins, it is therefore vitally important to make good quality routing decisions without expending a lot of time. The optimization of such LTL freight networks results in large scale mathematical programming problems. In this paper, we present a novel Integer Linear Programming (ILP) formulation and heuristics for routing LTL freight. Experiments in collaboration with our industry partner indicate that our proposals can significantly lower routing costs for Canadian LTL operators. In addition, our approach can be useful for generating load plans on larger American LTL networks.

Keywords: Less-than-truckload (LTL); Freight transportation; Hybrid heuristics; Integer programming; Functional decomposition; Directed Steiner forest (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0925527320302802
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:proeco:v:232:y:2021:i:c:s0925527320302802

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpe.2020.107925

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Production Economics is currently edited by Stefan Minner

More articles in International Journal of Production Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().