The design of road and air networks for express service providers

Express service providers move packages (i.e. parcels, documents, or pieces of freight) from senders to receivers under various but guaranteed service level agreements. These service level agreements specify date and time of collection at the sender, and receiving at the customer. Research in this dissertation is dedicated to the design of so-called express line-haul transports from the first consolidation point, the origin depot, to the last consolidation point, the destination depot. The line-haul transport is commonly organized either via road or via air. Hub locations are used to sort packages of incoming line-hauls, and to consolidate and load these packages on the outgoing line-hauls. The strategic network design problem is concerned with decisions on these hub locations in the network: how many hubs are needed and where should these be located, and which line-hauls are unloaded and loaded at each hub location? The tactical planning level at express service providers contains decisions on package routings from origin to destination and asset usages. This dissertation focusses on the design of the strategic and tactical line-haul network for road transport in Part I of this dissertation and deals with similar topics for air transport in Part II of this dissertation. In the concluding chapters we present a general review of strategic and tactical network design for express service providers and point to directions for future research.