A truck dispatching problem in the inland container transportation with empty container

In the container transportation of inland depots the empty container is an important issue. The truck dispatching problem in this paper is considered under restriction about empty containers. When a full container arrives in a depot by truck, after unloading operation the full container is changed to an empty container. After loading operation an empty container is changed to a full container. We suggest an integrated approach to the problem of simultaneously managing empty truck and container movements. We would like to find the truck dispatching method minimizing empty truck movements and empty container movements. In this paper, a mixed integer programming model is developed to obtain the optimal truck dispatching in container transportation and a heuristic is developed to give a good solution in much shorter time. The numerical examples are studied and the proposed heuristic is also compared with the result of numerical examples.