Liner shipping hub location and empty container repositioning: Use of foldable containers and container leasing

Abstract

Considering the influence of economies of scale and ship capacity on empty container repositioning, using foldable containers and container leasing may be effective ways to save the operating costs of liner shipping companies. Considering the minimization of the transportation costs of empty and laden containers, this paper studies a liner shipping hub location problem with empty container repositioning (LSHLPECR) considering foldable containers. We propose a mixed integer linear program (MILP) for the formulation of the LSHLPECR. In terms of the optimal solution of our MILP, this paper further explores the container leasing pricing problem (CLPP), where our aim is to obtain perceived container leasing prices (PCLPs) utilizing the inverse optimization technique. Numerical experiments verify the effectiveness of the studied problems.