Arrival Times with Hours of Service Regulations for Truck Drivers-Tracks and Gaps from Current Research

The aim of this article is to uncover tracks and gaps in scientific research addressing arrival time estimation in freight transport with accountability for driver Hours of Service (HoS) regulations in the context of the NEXTA project. The article uses a Systematic Literature Review to assess scientific research concerning arrival times and thereby highlights gaps, trends and established evidence related to arrival times with HoS consideration in freight transport. Existing approaches formulate arrival time estimation problem with emphasis on: 1) feasibility scheduling procedures, 2) feasibility scheduling with routing choices, and 3) optimizing the total cost or total time based on relevant activities. Advocated algorithms are built on backward search line-blocking intuition when focusing on feasible schedules and forward search techniques (in the direction of the visits) when routing is considered. When routing and feasible schedules are both considered heuristic procedures are employed with the help of dynamic programming or restricted dynamic programming but also optimization procedures in the case of multiple dimensions. The review suggests that a 3% to 16% savings can be achieved if HoS are taken into account when planning freight transport. A two stage iterative procedure is recommended for the NEXTA project: 1) establish the feasibility of the HoS, 2) establish the feasibility of the current arrival time.