The linehaul-feeder vehicle routing problem with virtual depots and time windows

This paper addresses the linehaul-feeder vehicle routing problem with virtual depots and time windows (LFVRPTW). Small and large vehicles deliver services to customers within time constraints; small vehicles en route may reload commodities from either the physical depot or from the larger vehicle at a virtual depot before continuing onward. A two-stage solution heuristic involving Tabu search is proposed to solve this problem. The test results show that the LFVRPTW performs better than the vehicle routing problem with time windows in terms of both objective value and the number of small vehicles dispatched.