Reducing hinterland transportation costs through container sharing

Based on two scenarios which describe the movement of full and empty containers within seaport hinterland transportation, this contribution determines possible benefits of exchanging empty containers between cooperating trucking companies. In the first scenario, trucking companies only have access to their own containers. In the second scenario, empty containers are permitted to be interchanged among several owners. Descriptions of both scenarios are given by comprehensive mathematical formulations considering vehicle routing, simultaneously with empty container repositioning. Realistic-sized instances are solved by applying an efficient tabu search heuristic. The results show that container sharing between trucking companies leads to remarkable cost savings.

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