An Exact Method for Vehicle Routing and Truck Driver Scheduling Problems

Abstract

In most developed countries working hours of truck drivers are constrained by hours of service regulations. When optimizing vehicle routes, trucking companies must consider these constraints in order to assure that drivers can comply with the regulations. This paper studies the combined vehicle routing and truck driver scheduling problem (VRTDSP), which generalizes the well-known vehicle-routing problem with time windows by considering working hour constraints. A branch-and-price algorithm for solving the VRTDSP with U.S. hours of service regulations is presented. This is the first algorithm that solves the VRTDSP to proven optimality.