Vehicle routing optimization for rural package collection and delivery integrated with regard to the customer self-pickup radius

This paper explores the optimization for the integrated vehicle routing of package collection and delivery in rural areas, based on the coverage idea and customer self-pickup strategy. The purpose is to optimize package collection and delivery in rural areas with the scattered and small-scale demand for the express service. An integrated vehicle routing model for rural package collection and delivery is established with regard to the radius of customer self-pickup, via taking the sum of operation cost, transportation cost, time penalty cost and carbon emission cost as the optimization goal. A two-stage algorithm based on the improved k-means clustering algorithm and genetic algorithm is designed to solve the model. Ziyuan county of Guangxi province is taken for typical example. The simulation results show that the optimization model can raise vehicle loading rate and service coverage rate, while reducing cost. A rise in the customer’s self-pickup radius and the number of packages collected and delivered can decrease the unit collection and delivery cost, and it is found that carbon emissions have little effects on the optimization of vehicle routing from the perspective of cost.