Assessing Last-Mile Delivery Distribution Structures Under Varied Markets and Delivery Environments
The growth of e-commerce, spurred by the internet, has bridged the gap between the consumer and the retailer, bringing comfort for the consumer and prosperity for the retailer. However, in a quest to achieve even larger market share, e-retailers make lucrative offers, such as free shipping, free returns, rush deliveries etc. This has made last-mile ever more demanding. To keep pace with growing demands of e-commerce, last-mile operators have implemented various alternate last-mile strategies. This includes use of crowd-shipping services, deployment of consolidation facilities and/or collection-points coupled with use of alternate fuel vehicles, such as electric trucks, cargo-bikes and drones. While these strategies have been extensively studied in the literature, yet a comprehensive knowledge about how different strategies compete and compare is lacking. Thus, the author proposes to develop (1) unique markets and delivery environments by assessing consumer, e-retailer and regulatory body behavior, (2) a Time-Dependent Dynamic-Stochastic Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem heuristic with Time-Windows (TD-DS-CVRPTW) to model the multi-echelon last-mile operations, and (3) a sustainability assessment tool to evaluate economic and environmental efficacy of last-mile strategies. Thereby, this work expects to develop a comprehensive knowledge of the capabilities of different last-mile strategies and policies for varied markets and delivery environments.
Language
- English
Project
- Status: Completed
- Funding: $30000
-
Contract Numbers:
DOT 69A3551747114
-
Sponsor Organizations:
Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology
University Transportation Centers Program
Department of Transportation
Washington, DC United States 20590National Center for Sustainable Transportation
University of California, Davis
Davis, CA United States -
Managing Organizations:
University of California, Davis
1 Shields Ave
Davis, California United States 95616National Center for Sustainable Transportation
University of California, Davis
Davis, CA United States -
Project Managers:
Iacobucci, Lauren
-
Performing Organizations:
University of California, Davis
1 Shields Ave
Davis, California United States 95616National Center for Sustainable Transportation
University of California, Davis
Davis, CA United States -
Principal Investigators:
Pahwa, Anmol
Jaller, Miguel
- Start Date: 20220101
- Expected Completion Date: 20221231
- Actual Completion Date: 20230801
- USDOT Program: University Transportation Centers
Subject/Index Terms
- TRT Terms: Consumer behavior; Crowdsourcing; Delivery service; Electronic commerce; Evaluation and assessment; Markets; Optimization; Policy; Regulation; Retail trade; Routing; Sustainable transportation; Time windows; Vehicle fleets
- Subject Areas: Economics; Freight Transportation; Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Planning and Forecasting; Policy;
Filing Info
- Accession Number: 01776458
- Record Type: Research project
- Source Agency: National Center for Sustainable Transportation
- Contract Numbers: DOT 69A3551747114
- Files: UTC, RIP
- Created Date: Jul 13 2021 1:39PM