Planning local container drayage operations given a port access appointment system

This paper studies the management of a fleet of trucks providing container pickup and delivery service (drayage) to a port with an appointment-based access control system. Responding to growing access congestion and its resultant impacts, many U.S. port terminals have implemented appointment systems, but little is known about the potential impact of such systems on drayage fleet efficiency. To address this knowledge gap, we develop a drayage operations planning approach based on an integer programming heuristic that explicitly models a port access control system. The approach determines pickup and delivery sequences for daily drayage operations with minimum transportation cost. We use the framework to develop an understanding of the potential productivity impacts of access control systems on drayage firms. Most importantly, we find that it is critical for terminal operators to provide enough access capacity for drayage, since vehicle productivity can be increased by 10 to 24 percent when total access capacity is increased by 30 percent. Furthermore, poor (but not unreasonable) selection of access appointment time slots by drayage firms may result in substantial customer service deficiencies, reducing the number of customers that can be served by up to 4 percent for a fixed level of total access capacity.