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Vehicle allocation problems (VAPs), which are frequently confronted in many transportation activities, primarily including but not limited to full truckload freight transportation operations, induce a significant economic impact. Despite the increasing academic attention to the field, literature still fails to match the needs of and opportunities in the growing industrial practices. In particular, the literature can grow upon the ideas on sustainability, Industry 4.0 and collaboration, which shape future practices not only in logistics but also in many other industries. This review has the potential to enhance and accelerate the development of relevant literature that matches the challenges confronted in industrial problems. Furthermore, this review can help to explore the existing methods, algorithms and techniques employed to address this problem, reveal directions and generate inspiration for potential improvements.

This study provides a literature review on VAPs, focusing on quantitative models that incorporate any of the following emerging logistics trends: sustainability, Industry 4.0 and logistics collaboration.

In the literature, sustainability interactions have been limited to environmental externalities (mostly reducing operational-level emissions) and economic considerations; however, emissions generated throughout the supply chain, other environmental externalities such as waste and product deterioration, or the level of stakeholder engagement, etc., are to be monitored in order to achieve overall climate-neutral services to the society. Moreover, even though there are many types of collaboration (such as co-opetition and vertical collaboration) and Industry 4.0 opportunities (such as sharing information and comanaging distribution operations) that could improve vehicle allocation operations, these topics have not yet received sufficient attention from researchers.

The scientific contribution of this study is twofold: (1) This study analyses decision models of each reviewed article in terms of decision variable, constraint and assumption sets, objectives, modeling and solving approaches, the contribution of the article and the way that any of sustainability, Industry 4.0 and collaboration aspects are incorporated into the model. (2) The authors provide a discussion on the gaps in the related literature, particularly focusing on practical opportunities and serving climate-neutrality targets, carried out under four main streams: logistics collaboration possibilities, supply chain risks, smart solutions and various other potential practices. As a result, the review provides several gaps in the literature and/or potential research ideas that can improve the literature and may provide positive industrial impacts, particularly on how logistics collaboration may be further engaged, which supply chain risks are to be incorporated into decision models, and how smart solutions can be employed to cope with uncertainty and improve the effectiveness and efficiency of operations.

This paper defines the emerging intermodal issues, identifies alternative solutions and develops strategies to achieve them. It reviews intermodal logistics policies in the EU, NAFTA and Asia, focusing on the United States and Japan in NAFTA and Asia respectively, because they have been the prominent motors of international trade in their regions. From an Asian standpoint, it is a pity that it is not yet possible to report on a common intermodal strategy.

The e-freight program launched by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) has gradually become a standard specification for international air freight operations. This study examined critical factors affecting air freight forwarders’ decision to adopt the IATA e-freight using a technology-organization-environment model with air freight forwarders in Taiwan as the base. Our findings show that ‘information technology (IT) competence’, ‘trading partner pressure’, ‘government policy’ and ‘competitive pressure’ all have significant positive effects on air freight forwarders’ decision to adopt the e-freight and the top three factors among these are ‘government funding’, ‘government’s active promotion’ and ‘government’s requirement of electronic air waybill (e-AWB)’. Finally, this study proposes strategies that can encourage air freight forwarders to decide on e-freight adoption for the information of relevant oK regyawniozradtison International Air Transport Association (IATA); IATA e-freight; Technology organization environment model; Air freight forwarder

Sustainable transport has become a new paradigm offering efficient, equitable, and pro-environment transport services. Many intermodal freight systems, especially those for port-to-rail networks, consist of multiple routes starting from and ending at the same port in order to exploit economies of scale. It is of interest to railway operators, therefore, to improve the efficiency of the system by finding the optimal fleet size (the number of cars assigned to a route) and frequency for each route. This paper proposes a model which determines the optimal frequency of each route under the total fleet size constraint for the one-to-many distribution. Trains carry items from one port to their destinations on their predetermined routes. This paper focuses on situations in which items from one port are transported to many destinations via railroads. The tradeoffs between transportation and inventory costs determine optimal frequency under the total fleet size and capacity constraints. The optimal frequency and fleet size of each route are calculated and then updated at the end of each step of the model. The model that we have developed in this paper is validated by port-to-rail freight data from actual shipments in Korea. The results of the analysis show that the proposed model can provide a more reliable and realistic representation of the real one-to-many distribution than the other alternatives which are commonly used. This study not only forms the theoretical basis of an effective and rational freight operation, but it also contributes to the assessment of the existing and planned logistics systems.

We adopt a super slack-based measurement (SBM) data envelopment analysis (DEA) model to estimate the efficiency of five biggest freight rail operators in Russia, which are included in the top 30 freight rail operators in terms of two dimensions – financial and operational efficiency during 2013–2017. The result shows that the private companies characterized by high financial and operational efficiency, while the Rossiiskye Zheleznye Dorogi (RZD) subsidiaries characterized by sufficiently low financial and operational efficiency scores. And the result also presents that operational efficiency score of operators handling universal rolling stock is higher than financial efficiency scores. In contrast, financial efficiency scores of operators handling special rolling stock is higher than operational efficiency scores. rail freight operators in addition to a special rolling stock park should have a universal rolling stock park for higher profitability. State-owned companies and its subsidiary operate inefficiently in the midst of a market economy in Russia. Rail freight operators for a higher level of financial efficiency should be transferred to the private sector.

This paper evaluates and assesses the competitiveness of airports by analyzing the efficiency of those in Northeast Asia. This research implemented Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to compare the competitiveness of airport efficiency and Decision Making Unit (DMU), which was selected by the top ranking freight operations among the airports in this region. Due to the lack of previous research with regard to the competitiveness of hub concentrated airports in air cargo volume, the variables have been screened for selection through referential documents and records related to air freight. Finally, aviation freight experts assisted in the final selection of the relevant variables for this research. The result of the analysis show that the larger airports in Northeast Asia are positively correlated with higher efficiency. In contrast, inefficient airports have suffered from over capacity or insufficient input.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate empirically how information and communication technologies (ICT) can contribute to reduction of CO₂ emissions in road freight transport and to identify opportunities for further improvements.

This research adopts a multiple case study approach with three leading UK grocery retailers as exemplars of fast-moving consumer goods retailers, conducted using multiple data collection techniques including interviews, system demonstrations, onsite observations and the use of archive information.

ICT solutions have a direct positive impact on CO₂ emissions reduction but opportunities to further reduce CO₂ emissions are perceived as lying beyond retailers’ own distribution networks. These opportunities are not fully utilised due to the complexities of collaborative ICT provisions and retailers’ reluctance to share information with competitors.

A limitation of the study is that it is exploratory and only three cases were examined. Even though these three retailers represent over 60 per cent of the UK grocery retail sector, other retailers may deploy significantly different ICT applications.

The research provides an overarching insight for businesses on how to leverage the existing and emerging information technologies for environmental and economic benefits.

While sustainability issues have received increasing attention recently, the role of ICT in freight transport for CO₂ emissions reduction has not been investigated in depth and its impact is largely unknown. This research advances understanding about how ICT contributes CO₂ emissions reductions and provides a framework for further investigation.

Several freight operations rely on human cognition and behavior. Tackling these aspects, gamification transforms activities to resemble game-like experiences. Since the freight transportation sector is rapidly adopting gamification, the purpose of this study is to provide an overview that synthesizes the state-of-the-art and plot future directions for research and the practice of gamifying this area.

A systematic review of the gamification of freight transportation was conducted. After screening 691 studies, 40 relevant studies were analyzed.

Most studies found positive psychological and behavioral outcomes from gamification. Literature mainly focused on tackling the operational-level issues of road and maritime transportation modes by implementing simulation games.

Besides elaborating how gamification can improve freight transportation, the authors describe directions still uncovered by the current corpus, such as research design and temporality and the variety of modes and tasks.

Practical implications emerged from the studies, primarily focusing on understanding users, tasks and contexts, targeting different audiences and transportation modalities, and balancing motivational affordances, while considering the demands of the freight transportation domain, including dynamic, spatially dispersed environments and cooperation between multiple stakeholders.

The transportation of goods dominates much of the global economy and ecology. Therefore, gamifying this domain has a huge societal impact potential, especially related to issues of sharing economy, safety, environmental sustainability and social media.

Beyond providing an original overview of gamified freight transportation, this study maps current research gaps and describes practical recommendations.

Despite large bodies of research related to the impacts of e-commerce on last-mile logistics and sustainability, there has been limited effort to evaluate urban freight using an equity lens. Therefore, this study proposes a modeling framework that enables researchers and planners to estimate the baseline equity performance of a major e-commerce platform and evaluate equity impacts of possible urban freight management strategies. The study also analyzes the sensitivity of various operational decisions to mitigate bias in the analysis.

The model adapts empirical methodologies from activity-based modeling, transport equity evaluation, and residential freight trip generation (RFTG) to estimate person- and household-level delivery demand and cargo van traffic exposure in 41 U.S. Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs).

Evaluating 12 measurements across varying population segments and spatial units, the study finds robust evidence for racial and socio-economic inequities in last-mile delivery for low-income and, especially, populations of color (POC). By the most conservative measurement, POC are exposed to roughly 35% more cargo van traffic than white populations on average, despite ordering less than half as many packages. The study explores the model’s utility by evaluating a simple scenario that finds marginal equity gains for urban freight management strategies that prioritize line-haul efficiency improvements over those improving intra-neighborhood circulations.

Presents a first effort in building a modeling framework for more equitable decision-making in last-mile delivery operations and broader city planning.

This paper inspects in detail the seasonality (deterministic) in container freight rates, and compares seasonality patterns in different freight rate indices. A deterministic seasonality unit root test is performed to achieve set objectives. This study concludes that all the indices (tested in this paper) exhibit significant deterministic seasonality. For January and August, there is no seasonal effect observed in all five series. At the same time, all the indices except Exports from Europe Rate Index (EEI) exhibit significant seasonal patterns in February, September, and December. All five indices exhibit significant seasonality during May, and the coefficient sign shows a drop in the freight rates. During March, October, and November; it is observed that only EEI exhibit significant seasonal patterns. The results could be beneficial for carriers and agents who are involved in the containerised freight transport business. Also, shippers could get a clear idea about the freight rates' nature across various trade routes.