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Stochastic freight flow patterns: implications for fleet optimization

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  • Hall, Randolph W.

Abstract

Trucking, rail and other types of transportation networks share the common feature of moving equipment and crews between spatially separated terminals to accommodate the transportation of goods or people. This paper develops measures for temporal and spatial imbalances in freight flows, and applies these measures to a major trucking network. Fundamentally, the randomness inherent to a system of terminals is mitigated by pooling freight flows among terminal groups, and by pooling freight flows over many time periods. In the terminal network that we examined, long-run freight imbalances ensure that empty equipment movements must equal or exceed 13.3% of loaded movements at individual terminals and 8.2% of loaded movements at terminal groups. Due to short-run freight imbalances, the number of empty movements could increase by about 50% over the long-run average; greater increases would occur if equipment flows must be balanced on each travel lane. ©

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  • Hall, Randolph W., 1999. "Stochastic freight flow patterns: implications for fleet optimization," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 33(6), pages 449-465, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:transa:v:33:y:1999:i:6:p:449-465
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

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    2. Li, Jing-An & Leung, Stephen C.H. & Wu, Yue & Liu, Ke, 2007. "Allocation of empty containers between multi-ports," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 182(1), pages 400-412, October.
    3. Hall, Randolph W. & Zhong, Hongsheng, 2002. "Decentralized inventory control policies for equipment management in a many-to-many network," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 36(10), pages 849-865, December.
    4. Gronalt, Manfred & Hartl, Richard F. & Reimann, Marc, 2003. "New savings based algorithms for time constrained pickup and delivery of full truckloads," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 151(3), pages 520-535, December.
    5. Zolfagharinia, Hossein & Haughton, Michael, 2018. "The importance of considering non-linear layover and delay costs for local truckers," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 331-355.

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