A Feasibility Study on Cooperative Vehicle Deliveries under Competitive Circumstances by an Analytical Model

Abstract

For the last two decades, there has been a growing interest in cooperative vehicle deliveries. However this type of delivery systems may not have been successful as much as expected because of the resulting worse service levels in the cooperations and other reasons.In this paper, we model a cooperative delivery system by an analytical modelling technique to evaluate the effect of the system under competitive circumstances. we conducted by the model some case studies with various cooperative conditions. It is concluded from the studies that the cooperations result in improvements of profit for track companies which join the cooperations, and in only cases with relatively large cargo demands and frequent liner track services those take effect in reducing the number of delivery tracks.