A Collaborative Urban Distribution Network

Abstract Many urban areas are experiencing an increase in the number of trucks and vans delivering goods to retailers as well as a decrease in the utilisation of delivery vehicles. This leads to increased emissions, noise and conflicts with pedestrians. Large metropolitan areas often have a number of retail centres with outlets being regularly serviced by wholesalers. Urban distribution systems are typically characterised by suppliers operating their own vehicle fleets, distributing only their goods to their customers on a regular basis. Within specific sectors there is an opportunity to combine urban distribution networks to reduce the number of vehicles required for deliveries as well as the distance travelled by delivery vehicles. This can result in substantial savings in transport operating costs for carriers as well as reduced emissions and noise from freight vehicles. It is common in urban distribution networks for suppliers to distribute only their goods to retail outlets. This involves each supplier operating vehicles to carry each retailer's goods and vehicles must visit each retail outlet regularly from the supplier's warehouse. While routes and schedules can be optimised for each wholesaler, vehicles generally have low utilisation. This paper estimates the benefits of a collaborative distribution network that involves suppliers sharing the use of vehicles as well as their storage areas. With the collaborative system, a transfer route is used to transfer goods between suppliers where goods with destinations near other suppliers are transferred to these suppliers. This allows delivery routes from suppliers to be developed with higher utilisation and lower travel distances. A hypothetical urban distribution system is used to estimate the performance of the collaborative distribution system. The process used to transform independent distribution systems to collaborative networks is also presented.