The Canadian minimum duration truck driver scheduling problem

In Canada transport companies must ensure that truck drivers can comply with Canadian Commercial Vehicle Drivers Hours of Service Regulations. Canadian regulations comprise the provisions found in US hours of service regulations as well as additional constraints on the maximum amount of driving and the minimum amount of off-duty time on each day. This paper presents a mixed integer programming formulation and an iterative dynamic programming approach for minimising the duration of truck driver schedules complying with Canadian hours of service regulations. Computational experiments show that schedule durations can be significantly reduced compared with a previously presented approach which only focuses on feasibility.