A decision support system of vehicle routing and refueling for motor carriers with time-sensitive demands

Given the recent trend of raising fuel cost and the increased time-sensitiveness of shippers, an extensive pressure is placed on the motor-carrier industry to meet the time-constrained customer demands at minimum fuel cost. We propose a decision support system that allows motor carriers to route each vehicle such that the vehicle not only visits all the customers in time (without violating time windows), but also utilizes the ''cheapest'' gas stations (cheapest truck stops in the region) as refueling points during the tour. While this approach does not necessarily minimize a vehicle's fuel consumption, as it often suggests using non-shortest routes with cheap gas stations (truck stops), it allows the vehicle to reduce the unit cost of buying fuel. Computational testing shows that the proposed approach may attain up to 4.29% savings in fuel cost for motor carriers.