To team up or not: single versus team driving in European road freight transport

Abstract

The last decades have seen a tremendous amount of research being devoted to effectively managing vehicle fleets and minimizing empty mileage. However, in contrast to, e.g., the air transport sector, the question of how to best assign crews to vehicles, has received very little attention in the road transport sector. The vast majority of road freight transport in Europe is conducted by single drivers and team driving is often only conducted if there are special circumstances, e.g., security concerns. While it is clear that transport companies want to avoid the costs related to additional drivers, vehicles manned by a single driver sit unused whenever the driver takes a mandatory break or rest. Team drivers, on the other hand, can travel a much greater distance in the same amount of time, because mandatory breaks and rests are required less frequently. This paper investigates under which conditions trucking companies should use single or team driving to maximize their profitability. We present a novel optimization approach for simultaneously optimizing routes and crewing decisions and provide experimental evidence that, for a wide range of cost factors, operating a fleet with a mix of team and single drivers can significantly reduce operational costs when compared to typical profit margins in the sector.

A concise guide to existing and emerging vehicle routing problem variants

“…HOS regulations also extend beyond classical single-driver day operations, and specific provisions exist for night work (Goel 2018) and team-driving (Goel et al 2019). Schiffer et al (2017) recently highlighted the benefits of jointly planning rest periods and recharging actions for electric vehicles.…”

Parking Lots Assignment Algorithm for Vehicles Requiring Specific Parking Conditions in Vehicle Routing Problem

“…These regulations allow for, among others, working in tandem, enabling the implementation of a transport task by a multiperson crew (usually two). In the literature, one can find items analysing VRP from the point of view of the driver's working time [22], [23], [25] and describing the advantages of working in tandem [26], [27].…”

A metaheuristic for crew scheduling in a pickup‐and‐delivery problem with time windows

“…In recent years, some authors have started to question whether to assign one or two truck drivers to a vehicle. For example, Goel et al (2020) suggest that neither single driving nor team driving alone is a good practice, and a mix of both results in lower operating costs. Generally, all these algorithms have been tested on the benchmark instances used in Goel (2009) with 100 customers and 144 hours (six days) for the planning horizon.…”