A two-stage hybrid heuristic solution for the container drayage problem with trailer reposition

Container drayage operations with tractor-trailer distinction and trailer reposition exist widely in real-world logistics yet have seldom been reported in the literature. This paper studies a container drayage problem with trailer reposition (CDPTR), in which trailers might be provided at pickup locations and kept at delivery locations. A two-stage solution framework is adopted to solve the problem. The first stage generates tractor schedules to maximize profit, and the second stage aims to ensure sufficient trailers at each trailer depot during the container drayage operation. A hybrid large neighborhood search and tabu search (LNS-TS) heuristic is developed to solve the problem. We construct 72 instances with different characteristics, for example, time window duration, initial trailer resource and distribution, and the number of requests. Results show that our solutions outperform the solutions obtained from the solver. A detailed analysis of the results also reveals several insights for container drayage operators.