An intermodal multicommodity routing problem with scheduled services

Abstract

We study a multicommodity routing problem faced by an intermodal service operator that uses ground and maritime transportation. Given a planning horizon, a set of commodities to be picked up at their release times and to be delivered not later than their duedates, the problem is to decide on routes for these commodities using trucks and scheduled and capacitated maritime services at minimum cost of transportation and stocking at the seaports. Two mixed integer programming formulations and valid inequalities are proposed for this problem. The results of a computational study to evaluate the strength of the linear programming relaxations and the solution times are reported. © 2011 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.