The benefit of advance load information for truckload carriers

• We model a dynamic pick-up and delivery problem for full truckload carriers.
• The study targets small trucking companies accounting for majority of the industry.
• The benefit of advance load information is investigated in various network settings.
• Access to the second-day load information can boost the profit by an average of 22%.
• The margin of benefit declines by acquiring load information further in advance.

This paper models and measures the profit improvement trucking companies can achieve by collaborating with their clients to obtain advance load information (ALI). The main approach is to formulate a comprehensive and flexible mixed integer mathematical model and implement it in a dynamic rolling horizon context. The findings illustrate that access to the second and the third day ALI can improve the profit by averages of 22% and 6%, respectively. We also found that the impact of ALI depends on radius of service and trip length but is statistically independent of load density and fleet size.