Multi-period planning of road trips in a cooperative environment

This paper regards the cooperation among truck carriers in logistic networks which include a port and some inland terminals. A set of carriers having different transportation demands is considered and the case in which the demand is shared among the different carriers is addressed. The problem of determining the best possible combinations of trips to satisfy the overall demand and their assignment to carriers is stated and optimally solved. The problem has the form of a nonlinear problem in which the objective is the maximization of the profits of the carriers involved in the collaboration, taking into account a set of operational constraints. Moreover, the problem concerns a multi-period planning in which trips can be performed early or late compared to their due dates and also compared to the day in which they are expected to be executed. Some experimental results are reported in the paper.