Truck Scheduling in the Postal Service Industry

The distribution networks of the postal service industry are organized according to the hub‐and‐spoke paradigm, so that parcel distribution centers play a crucial role to consolidate the parcel flows to full truckloads. In these terminals, inbound trucks are unloaded at gates, shipments are identified, sorted by the central sortation conveyor system, and loaded into outbound trailers, in which they are moved toward their next destination. In this context, the scheduling of inbound trucks, which assigns a gate and a processing interval to each truck, is an essential operational decision problem. We formalize the resulting optimization problem and provide suited solution procedures. Furthermore, we test the impact of truck scheduling on the sortation performance of the central conveyor system with the help of a comprehensive terminal simulation. The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/trsc.2016.0722.