A hybrid multi-objective evolutionary algorithm for solving truck and trailer vehicle routing problems

This paper considers a transportation problem for moving empty or laden containers for a logistic company. A model for this truck and trailer vehicle routing problem (TTVRP) is first constructed in the paper. The solution to the TTVRP consists of finding a complete routing schedule for serving the jobs with minimum routing distance and number of trucks, subject to a number of constraints such as time windows and availability of trailers. To solve such a multiobjective and multi-modal combinatorial optimization problem, a hybrid multiobjective evolutionary algorithm (HMOEA) is applied to find the Pareto optimal routing solutions for the TTVRP. Detailed analysis is performed to extract useful decision-making information from the multiobjective optimization results The computational results have shown that the HMOEA is effective for solving multiobjective combinatorial problems, such as finding useful trade-off solutions for the TTVRP.