Highlights A novel mathematical formulation considers different fuel prices in vehicle routing. The objective function minimizes the cost of fuel purchased at several fuel stations. New branch-and-cut and metheuristic algorithms efficiently solve the formulation. Instances are solved to perform a sensitivity analysis over fuel-related parameters. Longer distances do not always mean larger fuel cost when fuel prices are considered.
Abstract Most vehicle routing approaches disregard the need to refuel fleets. However, planners search for opportunities to refuel at lower prices even if, counter-intuitively, distant fuel stations need to be visited. We propose a novel mathematical formulation and develop branch-and-cut and matheuristic algorithms to efficiently tackle this problem. Results indicate that, to minimize costs, detour distances may increase up to 6 percentage points when fuel stations with lower prices are farther away from the depot. For practice, these insights imply that current policies disregarding station location and/or fuel prices along with “myopic” planning horizons may lead to sub-optimal decisions.
The multi-period vehicle routing problem with refueling decisions: Traveling further to decrease fuel cost?
2019-11-23
Article (Journal)
Electronic Resource
English
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