Search results

Empty container trucks may cause a deficit in transport capacity and contribute to congestion and emissions in the port territory. Reengineering of the container truck hauling process to introduce truck-sharing arrangements using the truck appointment system has the potential of reducing the number of empty-truck trips. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This research evaluates the results from an investigation of the truck appointment system using a case study approach. The data collection phase involved primary and secondary sources along with using publicly available data on port operations.

The study explores a dynamic truck-sharing facility for a computer-based matching system to assign probable export containers to available empty slots of a container truck. The proposed model reengineers the truck appointment system with a potential to reduce the number of empty-truck trips to increase container transport capacity around seaport gates.

Due to continuous increases in container-freight traffic, leading seaports of the world are experiencing a capacity shortage resulting in traffic congestion. The research findings are useful in practice as the proposed truck-sharing model can be introduced to enhance capacity in the container transport chain of the port territory.

The empty-trucks problem has not been addressed much in studies from a decentralized perspective where all truck operators have an equal chance to contribute to optimize the supply chain in contrast with the typical one-company-based optimization. The solution addressed here uses the shared-transportation concept to cover the research gap.

This paper evaluates an alternative queuing concept for marine container terminals that utilize a truck appointment system (TAS). Instead of having all lanes providing service to trucks with appointments, this study considers the case where walk-in lanes are provided to serve those trucks with no appointments or trucks with appointments but arrived late due to traffic congestion.

To enable the analysis of the proposed alternative queuing strategy, the queuing system is shown mathematically to be stationary. Due to the complexity of the model, a discrete event simulation (DES) model is used to obtain the average waiting number of trucks per lane for both types of service lanes: TAS-lanes and walk-in lanes.

The numerical experiment results indicated that the considered queuing strategy is most beneficial when the utilization of the TAS lanes is expected to be much higher than that of the walk-in lanes.

The novelty of this study is that it examines the scenario where trucks with appointments switch to the walk-in lanes upon arrival if the TAS-lane server is occupied and the walk-in lane server is not occupied. This queuing strategy/policy could reduce the average waiting time of trucks at marine container terminals. Approximation equations are provided to assist practitioners calculate the average truck queue length and the average truck queuing time for this type of queuing system.

Truck appointment systems have been applied in critical container ports in the United States due to their potential to improve handling operations. This paper aims to develop a truck appointment system to optimise the total cost experiencing at the entrance of container terminals by managing truck arrivals and the number of service gates satisfying a given level of service.

The approximation of M_t/G/n_t queuing model is applied and integrated into a cost optimisation model to identify (1) the number of arrival trucks allowed at each time slot and (2) the number of service gates operating at each time slot that ensure the average waiting time is less than a designated time threshold. The optimisation model is solved by the Genetic Algorithm and tested with a case study. Its effectiveness is identified by comparing the model's outcomes with observed data and other recent studies.

The results indicate that the developed truck appointment system can provide more than threefold and twofold reductions of the total cost experiencing at the terminal entrance compared to the actual data and results from previous research, respectively.

The proposed approach provides applicably coordinated truck plans and operating service gates efficiently to decrease congestion, emission and expenses.

Avoiding truck congestion and peaks in landside activity is one of the challenges to container terminal managers. The spreading of truck arrivals at terminals can be facilitated by widening the opening hours of terminals at the landside. Israel’s Ministry of Transport has instituted the “Good Night Program”, involving monetary incentives for importers and exporters who deliver containers to ports at night.

This paper aims to quantitatively examine the market utility resulting from shifting traffic from daytime to nighttime, and analyzes customer considerations regarding nighttime transportation.

The external utility found in the traffic-economics model is quite similar to the economic incentive given to customers. Therefore, a significant increase of the incentive is not feasible.

Furthermore, it seems that an incentive method by itself is not effective enough, and does not motivate customers to act and find creative solutions to the obstacles they face. To achieve a considerable change in nighttime transport to Israeli ports, more effective methods should be examined.

This study aims to explore the challenges of truck-sharing and effective ways of dealing with those in achieving supply chain collaboration and collaboration in transportation management (e.g. transport collaboration) for transport capacity expansion, and reducing carbon emission and traffic congestion for integrating environmental and social sustainability issues. This paper also reveals insights into successful shared-transportation and a reduction in empty trips.

This exploratory qualitative study was conducted by means of interviewing road carriers from the container transportation industry.

In a truck-sharing initiative, technical issues (e.g. carrying capacity) arise, some of which involve the container truck and some involving constraints that cannot be controlled, such as driving restrictions, seaport operating hours, and the presence of the large number of container categories pertaining to the industry. Therefore, a significant amount of “structural empty running” may always prevail. It should also be noted that some, seemingly vital, constraints can actually be changed, treated, or modified for better truck-sharing outcomes, such as building a foundation of trust and establishing coordination among road carriers.

A probable solution to the problem of increasing hinterland transport capacity is to make appropriate use of the huge number of idle truck slots that exist; this could be achieved by encouraging the acceptance of the challenges of truck-sharing realistically and suggesting an approach to handling them.

To broaden its appeal, truck-sharing initiatives must be able to overcome challenges by combining theoretical insight with an understanding of the practical aspects of such an endeavor. This original research fosters knowledge that is unique and which also has real-life applications in maritime logistics studies and supply chain literature for both port authorities and container road carriers.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate ways to reduce the average amount of exceeded guaranteed service time for external trucks at Deepwater Container Terminal Gdańsk Sp z o.o. (DCT Gdańsk) via dosing the gate activities, in particular IN-Gate entry process, of trucks carrying import/export/transit containers.

A Six Sigma methodology with the define, measure, analyze, improve, and Control (DMAIC) methods along with the SIPOC chart, cause and effect diagram, scatterplot, benchmark and brainstorming and finally multi-voting tool are used as analyses tools in this research.

DCT Gdańsk reorganized and modernized the gate operations. Gate reorganization and modernization include streaming line traffic at the gates, external parking lot optimization, implementation of dedicated supporting software and installation of dedicated CCTV cameras to provide 24 h live view. During gates development, the external truck service times data were collected and analysed. The obtained materials concerned the measurement of the average truck turnaround time before and after the implementation of the improvements.

The proposed approach of reducing the average amount of exceeded guaranteed service time of external trucks at the container terminal is unique and relatively cheap mainly due to organizational changes with some widely available low-cost investments and can be applied on a different scale to other container terminals or to transport and logistics companies.

The purpose of this paper is to explore, through a synthesis of the literature, the causes, benefits, constraints and ways for reducing the number of empty trips made by container trucks. Reduced empty truck trips contribute to sustainable transportation practices in the port territory.

To contribute in the current body of the literature, through a comprehensive synthesis of the studies, this study examines many perspectives surrounding the empty truck trips at container terminals. Hence different, but relevant operational aspects of empty truck trips are explored. This study adopts a content analysis as the research methodology.

Different perspectives, which are drawn from the reviewed literature, identify a research gap in published research in the area of transport collaboration (of supply chain collaboration) and coordination problems in hinterland transport chains (of maritime logistics), and the literature relating to backhauling (of vehicle routing problems with backhauls). To cover that research gap in the literature, this study attempts to highlight and synthesize the important empty-trips studies currently available into a coherent and understandable form.

As an integral part of encouraging collaboration in the container transportation industry, this research may be effective in persuading port authorities to evaluate and to help transport managers to reply to specific enquiries of truck-sharing arrangements.

The utilization of available empty space of container trucks is a feasible option of increasing transport capacity and achieving sustainable transportation benefits.

This paper provides a contemporary lens to view the relationship between empty trips and their applications in the carrier industry, in order to resolve the perceived issues of non-sustainable transportation and their implications for the society.

Ship chandlers’ trucks are now facing challenges owing to their job characteristics, which will lead to low productivity of trucks, congestions and pollutions at the port. The aim of this paper is to identify important causes and the effects of low truck productivity at the port under the demand of sustainable development.

Based on the literature review, potential causes and relevant analysis are developed and carried out by using a systematic approach, incorporating in-depth interviews with experts, cause analysis and risk management process.

Results from the research framework showed that a lack of communication with the port, late arrival of ships, truck congestion and fragmented deliveries are the most important factors that led to low truck productivity at the port. A solution that combines an integrated system that shares real-time information with the port, a consolidation hub and a truck-pooling platform is proposed to comply with green port concepts, together with factors considerations.

Although the operation of ship chandlers’ trucks is a derived business in overall port operations, it is an indispensable element at the port. The findings present a new insight to the relationship between ship chandlers’ trucks productivity and port operation efficiency for industry practitioners and port policymakers.

This paper discusses a case of truck sharing as an application of the sharing economy. This case study examines a real mixed feed company with multiple factories. In this company’s operation, bulk trucks located in a factory had not previously been shared for delivery with other factories to their pre-assigned customers of stock farms. Therefore, this paper suggests a new delivery system that facilitates truck-sharing and analyzes its effects on the transport cost and trucks’ CO₂ emissions. To this end, this paper develops vehicle routing models to represent the current delivery practice and the new truck-shared delivery (TSD). In addition, models are developed for a carbon control policy of an emission trading scheme (ETS) and the effects of the ETS on truck-sharing are investigated. Numerical analysis is conducted to identify the effects of the TSD and the carbon control policy and draw practical implications.

The technique of cross-docking is attractive to organisations because of the lower warehousing and transportation (consolidated shipments) costs. This concept is based on the fast movement of products. Accordingly, cross-docking operations should be monitored carefully and accurately. Several factors in cross-docking operations can be impacted by uncertain sources that can lead to inaccuracy and inefficiency of this process. Although many papers have been published on different aspects of cross-docking, there is a need for a comprehensive review to investigate the sources of uncertainties in cross-docking. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to analyse and categorise sources of uncertainty in cross-docking operations. A systematic review has been undertaken to analyse methods and techniques used in cross-docking research.

A systematic review has been undertaken to analyse methods and techniques used in cross-docking research.

The findings show that existing research has limitations on the applicability of the models developed to solve problems due to unrealistic or impractical assumption. Further research directions have been discussed to fill the gaps identified in the literature review.

There has been an increasing number of papers about cross-docking since 2010, among which three are literature reviews on cross-docking from 2013 to 2016. There is an absence of study in the current literature to critically review and identify the sources of uncertainty related to cross-docking operations. Without the proper identification and discussion of these uncertainties, the optimisation models developed to improve cross-docking operations may be inherently impractical and unrealistic.