Estimating the Vehicles’ Number for Servicing a Flow of Requests on Goods Delivery

Abstract The paper presents an approach to estimate the number of vehicles used while servicing the requests for cargo deliveries. A problem of determining such a number of lorries that provides the maximum profit of a transport company with the maximum level of the clients’ service is quite a complex issue due to the stochastic nature of the transport process and the random nature of the demand for cargo deliveries. The author presents a mathematical model of the transport process; on the basis of this model, the simulation model implemented in Python for the technological process of the flow servicing is developed. The results of the simulation experiment, based on the proposed software, allowed the author to determine the functional dependence of a level of service on parameters of demand and the number of vehicles. Using the obtained dependence, a formula for estimating the optimal number of vehicles was established as an argument, in which the function of the transport company’s profit reaches its extreme maximum.