An agent-based implementation of freight receiver and carrier collaboration with cost sharing

Freight transport stakeholders can benefit from collaborative planning. Unfortunately, appropriate decision and planning support tools are lacking. Consequently, freight stakeholders remain unaware of collaboration opportunities and the potential benefit of those coalitions. This paper focuses on implementing collaboration between urban freight receivers and carriers. Collaboration takes the form of cost-sharing among coalition members when receivers are willing to extend their time windows. Rigorous experiments confirm the behavioural sensitivity of the model. A realistically-sized case study in the City of Cape Town, South Africa, demonstrates the usability of the agent-based simulation model. The case study considers the impact of collaboration on after-hour deliveries. Results indicate that delivery cost reduces significantly (nearly 30%) when carriers and receivers are willing to collaborate and adopt after-hour deliveries - the carrier’s fleet composition changes to favour fewer but larger vehicles.