Horizontal cooperation in road transportation: a case illustrating savings in distances and greenhouse gas emissions

Abstract

This paper discusses horizontal cooperation in road transportation and supports the relevance of this praxis as a way of reducing delivery costs and greenhouse gas emissions. In a competitive market, costs reduction due to economies of scale in short and long run constitutes a key issue for small and medium enterprises. The paper reviews the existing literature on the topic and then examines different scenarios in order to quantify the savings in route costs that can be attained throughout horizontal cooperation. This numerical analysis is based on a set of well-known benchmarks for the Multidepot Vehicle Routing Problem, which has been adapted to illustrate a realistic but seldom considered example of horizontal cooperation. An Iterated Local Search algorithm is proposed to obtain high-quality solutions for this collaborative scenario, while noncollaborative scenarios are solved using a well-tested algorithm for the Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem. The savings in routing costs-both regarding distance-based and environmental costs-are computed taking into account different geographical distributions of customers with respect to their assigned service providers.

A survey on obstacles and difficulties of practical implementation of horizontal collaboration in logistics

“…In the Pérez‐Bernabeu et al. () case study, the authors demonstrate that important savings in distances and greenhouse gas emissions could be made through collaboration in the vehicle routing problem. They think that “one of the many aspects to analyze in horizontal cooperation is trust between entities.” Meanwhile, Özener and Ergun () emphasize that trust in horizontal collaboration is somehow difficult to build since collaborators are usually competitors.…”

“…Lyons et al (2006) focused on the preponderance that technologies have over socio-emotional cues. In the Pérez-Bernabeu et al (2015) case study, the authors demonstrate that important savings in distances and greenhouse gas emissions could be made through collaboration in the vehicle routing problem. They think that "one of the many aspects to analyze in horizontal cooperation is trust between entities."…”

Using horizontal cooperation concepts in integrated routing and facility‐location decisions

“…By sharing customer information, storage facilities, and vehicle capacities, route planning can be improved through a more efficient customer‐to‐depot allocation. This situation corresponds to an MDVRP (Montoya‐Torres et al., ; Pérez‐Bernabeu et al., ), in which customer‐allocation and routing decisions are combined (Fig. c).…”

“…Juan et al (2014a) analyzed the VRP with clustered backhauls as a particular case of HC. Following their work, Pérez-Bernabeu et al (2015) presented a study on the quantification of potential savings in road transportation through HC. The authors analyzed cooperation between carriers and shippers controlled by the same companies in a semicooperative scenario (equivalent to an MDVRP) and two noncooperative scenarios (multiple VRPs with clustered and scattered customer distributions).…”

Towards Collaborative Optimisation in a Shared-logistics Environment for Pickup and Delivery Operations

“…Frisk et al (2010) presented a case study of horizontal collaboration in tactical transportation planning between eight forest companies and the results showed up to 14.2% of the transportation cost saved. Pérez-Bernabeu et al (2015) discussed horizontal collaboration in road transportation and presented numerical analysis based on a set of well-known benchmarks for the Multidepot Vehicle Routing Problem. The average cost reduction ranges from 5% to 90% depending on the geographical distribution of customers with respect to their transport service providers.…”