Optimizing multiple truck trips in a cooperative environment

Horizontal cooperation among truck carriers is the framework considered in the present paper. More specifically, the goal of this paper is to properly distribute the profits related to a set of carriers collaborating together for merging multiple trips. First, a mathematical model is set to maximize the total profit of the coalition of carriers. The solution of the resulting optimization problem provides the best way of satisfying the overall demand by maximizing the overall profit. The way in which the overall profit is, then, allocated to the different carriers, thus determining carrier individual profits, is analyzed by using five game theory (GT) allocation methods. The main contribution of this work stands in the application of GT for the profit allocation; in the literature the majority of work deals with cost distribution. Moreover, the methods here proposed are practical and easy to be used by real trucking companies and have been implemented for real life cases. Results obtained in terms of individual and overall profits are reported and discussed in this paper.