Dimensionamento e alocação dinâmica de veículos no transporte rodoviário de cargas completas entre terminais

This paper addresses the dynamic vehicle allocation problem (DVAP) involving the road transportation of full loads between terminals, including the determination of the number of additional vehicles required to meet the demand for transportation in a multi-period finite planning horizon. The DVAP consists of defining the “movements” of a fleet of vehicles that transport goods between terminals with a wide geographical distribution and interact among themselves. These movements may be of fully laden vehicles, unladen vehicles used for repositioning, or vehicles held at a terminal to meet future demands. Emphasis is given to the characterization of the problem in real situations, the mathematical modeling of the problem by means of integer linear programming and the use of operational research techniques in solving the problem. The computational experiments conducted indicate that this approach can be useful for the solution of problems encountered in everyday life of a LTL transportation company in Brazil.