Modeling urban commercial vehicle daily tour chaining

This paper presents a tour-chain-based approach to modeling urban commercial vehicle daily activity patterns. A daily tour chain refers to a sequence of daily tours made by a vehicle. Multinomial logit model results demonstrate that urban daily tour-chain choice is a result of collective decisions based on cost and shipment characteristics. This research has significant contributions to the current literature in filling the gap of understanding such critical logistics decisions as distribution channel and factors affecting tour chaining. Furthermore, the paper presents an innovative use of commercial vehicle travel survey data, and points to the urgent need for better quality data.

► We formally define “tour chaining” of regional commercial vehicle daily activities. ► We model regional commercial vehicle daily activities as chained tours. ► We demonstrate the use of commercial vehicle surveys for tour-chain modeling. ► Tour-chain-based model captures distribution channel and tour chaining. ► Tour chains are the result of an economic decision of reducing logistics cost.