Cooperation among truck carriers in seaport containerized transportation

•The paper proposes a cooperative scheme for planning drayage operations.•The profit of the coalition is maximized ensuring a benefit for each carrier.•A novel compensation mechanism considers the importance of a trip for its carrier.•Node time windows and trip deadlines are considered in combining the trips.

Nowadays the majority of goods passing through seaports are transported by road, resulting in a large number of empty movements and high total costs. This paper proposes an optimization model for the cooperative planning of multiple truck carrier operations in a seaport environment for maximizing the total profit derived from their cooperation. A compensation mechanism is introduced to motivate carriers to share their trips. Time windows, trip deadlines and fleet sizes are considered. The planning approach is evaluated using real data sets from the Italian port of Genoa. Numerous scenarios are tested and an extensive computational analysis is reported.