Vehicle Scheduling with Timed and Connected Calls: A Case Study

A manual method was developed for scheduling the vehicle fleet of a contract transport undertaking. The main requirements were observance of time limits on individual calls and the ability to allocate pairs or groups of related calls to the same vehicle. These objectives were achieved by introducing an initial allocation of calls to vehicles prior to sequential routing of the calls. The allocation was based on a model relating work density (calls per unit area) to vehicle loading (calls per unit of vehicle time), and on fact-finding research on the main parameters of calling time, travelling speed and distance. This relationship was embodied in a visual scheduling aid for use by the route planners. Implementation was successful and resulted in about 15 per cent of vehicle time being made available for additional revenue-earning work without increase in fleet size. When utilized this represented an effective saving in operating costs of about 12 per cent.