Balanced Truck Dispatching Strategy for Inter-Terminal Container Transportation with Demand Outsourcing

This study proposes a balanced truck dispatching strategy for inter-terminal transportation (ITT) in large ports, incorporating proactive demand outsourcing to address stochastic and imbalanced ITT demand. A portion of ITT tasks are intentionally outsourced to third-party public trucks at a higher cost, so that self-owned trucks can be reserved for more critical tasks. The ITT system is modeled as a closed Jackson network, in which self-owned trucks circulate among terminals and routes. An optimization model is developed to determine the optimal proactive outsourcing ratios for origin–destination terminal pairs and the appropriate fleet size of self-owned trucks, aiming to minimize total transportation costs. Reactive outsourcing is also included to handle occasional truck shortages. A mean value analysis method is used to evaluate system performance with given decisions, and a differential evolution algorithm is employed for optimization. The case study of Shanghai Yangshan Port demonstrates that the proposed strategy reduces total system cost by 9.8% compared to reactive outsourcing. The results also highlight the importance of jointly optimizing outsourcing decisions and fleet size. This study provides theoretical insights and practical guidance for ITT system management under demand uncertainty.