DSS of vehicle refueling: A new enhanced approach with fuel weight considerations

The fixed-route vehicle-refueling problem (FRVRP) is a mathematical problem widely used in the U.S. trucking industry. The FRVRP seeks the best refueling policy (sequence of fuel stations to use, along with the fueling quantity at each station) for a given (fixed) origin-destination route that minimizes a vehicle's refueling cost. While effective, the current FRVRP methods need not produce optimal solutions, as they ignore the negative impacts that carrying excessive amounts of fuel in the tank can have on fuel consumption rates. This paper proposes a new approach to the FRVRP that takes into account the benefit of retaining some empty space in the fuel tank at all times, which enhances fuel economy. We show by conducting computational testing that our approach attains not only cheaper refueling costs, but also lower fuel burns, than other approaches. Our approach is simple, yet its implementation may save millions of gallons of diesel fuel and billions of dollars of fuel cost for the U.S. trucking industry per year.