A Model for the Coordination of 20-foot and 40-foot Container Movements in the Hinterland of a Container Terminal

Abstract

Considered is a carrier that requires decision support to organize an efficient transport of loaded and empty containers in the hinterland of a sea port. Loaded containers are handled as pickup-and-delivery requests, however, requests for empty containers are incomplete because either the pickup location of a container or the delivery location of a container is a priori unknown. The problem is modelled as a generalization of the pickup-and-delivery problem (PDP) with less-than-truckload (LTL) requests. Practically speaking, by using LTL request we are able to consider 20-foot and 40-foot containers simultaneously. This is closer to reality than most previous models discussed in the literature which use full truckload requests, i.e., only containers of homogeneous size are possible. Three types of decisions are involved in the proposed model: a determination of pickup or delivery locations for the incomplete requests, a routing of vehicles, and a routing of empty containers. The presented model is validated by means of a numerical example computed by a MIP solver.