An intelligent freight corridor overload control system

Abstract

Overload control is an important aspect of freight corridors in developing countries that largely depend on road transport to move goods between ports and areas of production and consumption. As the frequent weighing of trucks slows down the supply chain and add to operational costs, effective overload control must find a balance between the potentially conflicting goals of protection of infrastructure versus logistics efficiency. In this paper the authors demonstrate that an efficiently designed overload control system that utilizes modern information and communication technologies can simultaneously achieve the objectives of improved accuracy of control and increased logistics efficiency. The key element that makes this possible is the real-time sharing of information between different overload control centers, combined with the intelligent interpretation of available data, in order to optimize overload control over the entire corridor. The authors furthermore provide evidence that the potential improvements in logistics efficiency provide an attractive financial payback, taking into account the required investment to deploy the proposed new overload control system.