Truck Driver Scheduling in the European Union

Since April 2007 working hours of truck drivers in the European Union are controlled by regulation (EC) No. 561/2006. According to the new regulation, road transport undertakings must organise the work of drivers in a way that drivers are able to comply with the regulations and can be made liable for infringements committed by the drivers. Although of particular importance in long‐distance haulage, regulations on working hours of truck drivers have received very little attention in the scheduling literature. This paper presents a method for scheduling driving and working hours of truck drivers with respect to regulation (EC) No. 561/2006. Given a sequence of locations to be visited within specified time windows, the approach is guaranteed to find a schedule complying with the regulation if such a schedule exists.