Combinable containers: A container innovation to save container fleet and empty container repositioning costs

Koichi Shintani, Rob Konings and Akio Imai

Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, 2019, vol. 130, issue C, 248-272

Abstract: Combinable containers can either be used as a standard 20 ft or in combined state as a 40 ft container by altering the dimensional to match the cargo size. This paper examines the viability of combinable containers for saving the container related costs. We present a model of a minimum cost multi-commodity network flow problem that can be used to simultaneously determine the fleet sizes of standard and combinable containers and their empty container allocation/repositioning. Based on numerical experiments, we discovered that mixed use of both types of containers can save a significant portion of container related cost.

Keywords: Container transportation; Empty containers; Combinable containers; Container fleet sizing; Container fleet management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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DOI: 10.1016/j.tre.2019.09.004

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