A Machine Scheduling Approach to Improving Fleet Utilization for Carriers

Carriers are under increasing pressure to offset rising fuel charges with cost cutting or revenue generating schemes. One opportunity for cost reduction lies in asset management. This paper shows how a machine scheduling approach can be used to assign truck loads to delivery times and trucks. We present several models to find optimal assignments when delivery times are flexible. The models have two objectives: minimizing needed assets and minimizing the costs of schedule deviation. We further investigate the implications of this multi-objective framework by demonstrating how improvements in fleet usage translate into savings which carriers can use as incentives to promote flexible delivery times for customers.