Truckload Carrier Selection, Routing and Cost Optimization (original) (raw)

The aim of this thesis was to investigate the routing decision combined with common carrier selection for dedicated contract carriers to reduce full truckload routing cost on pickup and delivery service within time windows in a multiple depots scenario. Mixed Integer Programming and some heuristic algorithms such as the genetic algorithm and annealing algorithm have been successfully used to solve vehicle routing problems for a long time, but researchers seldom simultaneously focus on issues of carrier selection, multiple depots, time window, and the government regulations for a dedicated contract carrier. Therefore, this thesis involved constraints of pickup and delivery with time window, applied exact method to solve this problem and discussed further utilization of equipment, cost variance, and facility location under the influence of the new routing strategy. This thesis used two baseline methods to summarize current popular solutions for this problem. A comprehensive optimizati...