Use of transportation relays to improve private fleet management

We explore the use of transportation relays, a somewhat unconventional transportation operations concept, in terms of improving private fleet management. A transportation relay is a shipment that is divided into two legs. With transportation relays, there is more ways to route freight with a private fleet. We use a linear program to find private fleet tours with and without relays for a large retailer. We find that relays increase private fleet use by 17% and reduce total transportation cost by 6%. Inbound relays increase the utilization of private fleet on the inbound lanes while outbound relays shift the private fleet capacity between neighboring DCs. Together, inbound and outbound relays better utilize existing private fleet resources and can be used to justify an investment in a larger private fleet through the purchase of addition tractors and trailers.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Engineering Systems Division.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2009

Authors dc:creator

• Tsu, John
• Agarwal, Mayank

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Chris Caplice.

• Engineering Systems Division.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/53544

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/53544