A simulated annealing heuristic for the truck and trailer routing problem with time windows

European firms have been using a combination of trucks and trailers in the delivery/collection of food products for years. Thus, some previous studies had been devoted to improving the efficiency of the resulting truck and trailer routing problem (TTRP). Since time window constraints are present in many real-world routing applications, in this study, we introduce the truck and trailer routing problem with time windows (TTRPTW) to bring the TTRP model closer to the reality. A simulated annealing (SA) heuristic is proposed for solving the TTRPTW. Two computational experiments are conducted to test the performance of the proposed SA heuristic. The results indicate that the proposed SA heuristic is capable of consistently producing quality solutions to the TTRPTW within a reasonable time.

► Introduce the truck and trailer routing problem with time windows (TTRPTW).
► Propose a simulated annealing heuristic for the TTRPTW.
► Generate benchmark instances for the TTRPTW.