Long-Haul Vehicle Routing and Scheduling with Biomathematical Fatigue Constraints

Hours of service (HOS) regulations are among the conventional safety constraints that are compiled by long-haul truck drivers. These regulations have been considered in models and algorithms of vehicle routing problems to assign safe schedules to drivers. However, the HOS regulations neglect a few crucial fatigue risk factors and, at times, fail to generate fatigue-reducing schedules. In this study, a set of biomathematical fatigue constraints (BFCs) derived from biomathematical models are considered for a long-haul vehicle routing and scheduling problem. A BFC scheduling algorithm and a BFC-HOS scheduling algorithm have been developed and then embedded within a tabu search heuristic to solve the combined vehicle routing and scheduling problem. All the solution methods have been tested on modified Solomon instances and a real-life instance, and the computational results confirm the advantages of employing a sophisticated and fatigue-reducing scheduling procedure when planning long-haul transportation.