TITLE: Evaluation of different approaches for the Truckload Vehicle Routing Problem in a Competitive Environment

ABSTRACT: The principal focus of this research is to evaluate the effectiveness of different approaches for the vehicle routing problem in a competitive environment (VRPCE). This paper focuses on the study of the VRPCE in a marketplace with time-sensitive truckload pickup-and-delivery requests. In this paper, two carriers compete for service requests; each arriving service request triggers an auction where carriers compete with each other to win the right of servicing the load. This paper will show how the efficiency of routing and costing approaches in different market settings will depend on these carriers ’ approaches. A simulation framework is used to evaluate different strategies. Some results and the overall simulation framework are also discusse