Technical gazette, Vol. 28 No. 3, 2021.
Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.17559/TV-20200730121355
Tractor and Semitrailer Routing Problem of Highway Port Networks under Unbalanced Demand
Hongxia Guo
; 1) School of Transportation and Logistics, Southwest Jiaotong University, China, 2) School of Economics and Management, Guangxi University of Science and Technology, China, Building 33, South Asia Mansion, 3 Wenchang Road, Liuzhou, Guangxi, 545006 P. R. China
Shaoquan Ni*
; School of Transportation and Logistics, Southwest Jiaotong University, China, No. 111, Section 1, North 2nd Ring Road, Jinniu District, Chengdu, China
Abstract
In China, highway port networks are essential in carrying out tractor and semitrailer transportation operations. To analyze the characteristics of tractor and semitrailer routing in highway port networks, this study examined the situation in which the demands at both ends of the operation might be unbalanced and multiple requirements might be raised in the operation of tractor and semitrailer transportation. An optimal tractor and semitrailer routing model for an entire network was established to reduce the total transportation costs and the number of towing vehicles in the network. Moreover, a heuristic algorithm was designed to solve the model. The comparisons of Strategy 1 and Strategy 2 for a two-stage network swap trailer show that the number of pure network swaps trailer tractors decreases by 21.6% and 18.6%, respectively; and that the cost drops by 7.8% and 7.9%, respectively. In other words, swap trailer transport enterprises can abandon the original swap trailer transportation mode for a two-stage network and adopt a routing optimization strategy for an entire network to achieve superior operation performance, reduce costs, and enhance profits. The study provides a reference for optimizing tractor and semitrailer routing in highway port networks with balanced and multiple demands.
Keywords
highway port; road port networks; scheduling optimization; truck and trailer transportation; unbalanced demand
Hrčak ID:
258226
URI
Publication date:
6.6.2021.
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