Real-Time Operational Strategies for Truckload Pickup and Delivery Problems

When information on jobs is gradually known in the course of the system´s operation, real-time techniques become increasingly important. The paper introduces a generic real-time truckload pickup and delivery problem, which includes the consideration of various costs associated with trucks´ empty travel distances, jobs´ delayed completion times, and job rejections. A mixed integer programming formulation for the off-line version of the problem is proposed. Then three rolling horizon strategies are considered and compared for the real-time version. The comparison of the policies is done under a general simulation framework. The new re-optimization policy is shown to systematically outperform the others