EURO 2025 Leeds
Abstract Submission

2967. Optimizing Container Drayage with Fractional Loads

Invited abstract in session WA-32: Hinterland and container drayage operations, stream Maritime and Port Logistics.

Wednesday, 8:30-10:00
Room: Maurice Keyworth 1.09

Authors (first author is the speaker)

1. Eduardo Lalla-Ruiz
Faculty of Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences, University of Twente
2. Marco Luis Ochoa Barnuevo
IEBIS, University of Twente
3. Fabian Akkerman
Industrial Engineering and Business Information Systems, University of Twente

Abstract

Container drayage (i.e., the short-distance transport of containers between ports, depots, and customer sites) accounts for up to 40% of total transport costs despite covering only a minor portion of the journey. Traditional models focus on full-truck pickups and deliveries, overlooking opportunities for shared loads, which leads to excessive empty trips and inefficient resource use. This research explores and introduces the Container Drayage Problem with Fractional Loads (CDPFL), which incorporates multi-trip scheduling, clustered customer demands, and shared container loads. The goal is to optimize the total travel time as well as earliness and on-time delivery to respond to customer preferences

To solve this problem, we propose a constructive heuristic for initial solutions and a metaheuristic refinement approach, enhancing scalability for large-scale drayage operations. Extensive experiments using adapted benchmark instances were used. Results show that integrating shared load strategies with multi-trip routing significantly reduces travel time and empty truck movements. This highlights a new aspect and potential of collaborative logistics in drayage operations and provides insights for improving container flow efficiency.

Keywords

Status: accepted


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