A column generation based solution approach for bid construction in TL transportation procurement auctions

Combinatorial auctions have been proved to be very efficient trading mechanisms for the procurement of TL transportation services. In such a trading process, carriers compete by submitting package bids on shipping movements required by one or multiple shippers. Each carrier must thus solve the socalled bid construction problem in order to determine the set of shipments it should bid on. This paper propose a column-generation based solution approach to help carriers solve this problem. Our preliminary results are promising.