Solving the tractor and semi-trailer routing problem based on a heuristic approach

We study the tractor and semi-trailer routing problem (TSRP), a variant of the vehicle routing problem (VRP). In the TSRP model for this paper, vehicles are dispatched on a trailer-flow network where there is only one main depot, and all tractors originate and terminate in the main depot. Two types of decisions are involved: the number of tractors and the route of each tractor. Heuristic algorithms have seen widespread application to various extensions of the VRP. However, this approach has not been applied to the TSRP. We propose a heuristic algorithm to solve the TSRP. The proposed heuristic algorithm first constructs the initial route set by the limitation of a drivers on-duty time. The candidate routes in the initial set are then filtered by a two-phase approach. The computational study shows that our algorithm is feasible for the TSRP. Moreover, the algorithm takes relatively little time to obtain satisfactory solutions. The results suggest that our heuristic algorithm is competitive in solving the TSRP.