We study the tactical problem of determining a last-mile delivery fleet size while accounting for day-to-day uncertainty in the number and location of customer requests. An optimally sized fleet must balance the cost of contracting vehicles against the penalty costs of unserved customers: a larger fleet reduces the risk of unserved demand, but a smaller … Read more
Public school administrators benefit from the ability to estimate future transportation needs on multi-year time scales, but student locations change from year to year. Continuous approximation (CA) methods are valuable for planning in similar settings where future spatial realizations of transportation demand are unknown. With this motivation in mind, this paper studies the use of … Read more
Collection and delivery points (CDPs) are fixed locations where customers can pick up parcels and/or drop off shipments or returns rather than requiring home delivery. CDPs allow logistics operators to consolidate multiple customer delivery requests on fewer vehicle stops, reducing distribution costs. However, for customers to adopt CDPs, they must be willing to travel to … Read more