Service network design for freight transportation: a review

Freight transportation is a highly competitive market, where logistics service providers (LSP) or carriers have to offer their customers highly reliable and high-quality services at low prices. To meet this challenge, LSPs have to standardize and consolidate. They consolidate their freight in a network of hubs and terminals and build up regular services. The design of such services requires decisions about the frequency, mode, and route of the service, and the corresponding schedule and routing of the freight. In some cases, they also need to make decisions about the assignment of crew and vehicles as well as the repositioning of empty containers and vehicles. Recent publications show that realistic instances of such planning problems are difficult to solve. Nevertheless, some of these real-life problems are modeled and solved using mathematical programming techniques. In this paper, we review different problem formulations published in literature. We further analyze and compare the specific solution frameworks. Based on this we give recommendations for future research.