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Pickup and Delivery with Split Loads

Department of Management, Marketing, and Logistics, Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, Georgia 30460
School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia 30332
School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia 30332
mnowak{at}georgiasouthern.edu
oergun{at}isye.gatech.edu
cwhite{at}isye.gatech.edu

Splitting loads such that the delivery of certain loads is completed in multiple trips rather than one trip results in opportunities for a reduction in cost and the number of vehicles used. Several studies have shown the benefit of split deliveries for the vehicle routing problem, in which a vehicle operating out of a depot makes a series of deliveries on each route. In this paper, we quantify the benefit of using split loads for the pickup and delivery problem. A heuristic to solve the pickup and delivery problem with split loads is developed and applied to a set of random large-scale problem instances, revealing the potential benefit of split loads. This benefit is reduced when the heuristic is applied to a real-world trucking industry problem because of several problem instance characteristics. The benefit of split loads is found to be most closely tied to three characteristics: load size, cost associated with a pickup or delivery, and the frequency with which loads have origins or destinations in common. Prior to a discussion of these results, we define the pickup and delivery problem with split loads and prove that for a set of given origins and destinations the most benefit can occur with load sizes just above one half of vehicle capacity.

Key Words: vehicle routing; split pickup and delivery
History: Received: November 2006; revised: April 2007; accepted: May 2007.

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