We determine the efficiency of a delivery system in which an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), or a fleet of UAVs, provides service to customers while making return trips to a truck that is itself moving. In other words, a UAV picks up a package from the truck (which continues on its route), and after delivering the package, the UAV returns to the truck to pick up the next package. Although the ha...

BACKGROUND Fatigue driving is a leading cause of traffic fatalities and injuries in China, especially among heavy truck drivers. The present study tried to examine which and how factors within the human-vehicle-roadway-environment system contribute to the occurrence of crashes involving fatigued truck drivers. FINDINGS To reduce such risk on the road, a total of 9168 crashes which occurred in...

A methodology that combines text mining, statistical process control and a balanced scorecard eliminated inaccurate manual claim coding and a significantly reduced the time required to identify root causes of field failures. As a result annual warranty claim costs have decreased, product reliability has increased, and customer satisfaction has improved.

The purpose of this paper was to explore the utility of an electronic nose to detect the quality of litchi fruit stored in different environments. In this study, a PEN3 electronic nose was adopted to test the storage time and hardness of litchi that were stored in three different types of environment (room temperature, refrigerator and controlled-atmosphere). After acquiring data about the hard...

An exposure assessment is conducted for psychrotrophic and mesophilic Bacillus cereus in a cooked chilled vegetable product. A model is constructed that covers the retail and consumer phase of the food pathway, using the output of a similar model on the industrial process as input. Microbial growth is the predominant process in the model. Variability in time and temperature during transport and...

This paper analyzes the routing of agricultural freight from the fields to the elevators. A number of optimization models are built to analyze the effects of truck type restrictions in the truck mix on the overall system cost of delivering from fields to elevators. The models account for both the selection of truck type and load type for deliveries while respecting the load restrictions imposed...

Transport networks vary and change over time. This paper aims to contribute to raising the level of safety in the road transport industry (trucking industry), by assessing the current state of truck accidents, drivers, and regulations which control the land transport in Saudi Arabia. This has been conducted through surveys and field interviews with specialized authorities. Moreover, to evaluate...

15. Supplementary Notes Supported by a grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation, University Transportation Centers Program 16. Abstract The objective of this research is to characterize large truck safety levels in Texas on the basis of driver, vehicle, cargo, and carrier traits while controlling for the effects of crash and operating environment conditions. Data to support this investi...

Seaport terminals recognise the need to change current practices in order to improve regional air quality while enhancing their terminals’ competitiveness. One area that terminals can do better at is to improve their yard crane operations and in turn reduce the trucks in-terminal delay. This study examines various container rehandling strategies by the yard cranes with the goal of improving the...

The nonlinear behavior of soils can significantly modify the wavelet radiated from vibrator trucks. In this paper, we describe a field experiment designed to measure the nonlinear response of a natural soil formation in the near-field of a vibrator truck. A 267-kN (30-ton) vibrator truck performed a step-sweep through a set of 201 discrete frequencies from 50-Hz to 10-Hz, which was repeated at ...