Sustainable trucks for long-haul transportation

How can you sustainably schedule and deploy a fleet of long-haul trucks that often cross entire continents? A research team at the Department of Operations, Energy and Environmental Management at the University of Klagenfurt is investigating this question. Preliminary findings are now available in the form of a mathematical model. Next, the results will be applied to the complex requirements on the road.

North America offers a striking example of the challenge that sustainability poses for haulage companies: All of North America is criss-crossed by transport networks operated by individual hauliers. To move goods from A to B, you need to plan the refuelling and loading points across thousands of kilometres. The emissions associated with the production of electricity and hydrogen depend in part on the location, due to the tremendous distances involved. In addition, the cost of electricity and hydrogen varies from state to state.

The research team, which includes Christian Truden (Department of Operations, Energy and Environmental Management at the University of Klagenfurt), aims to create mathematical models of these complex conditions that can be used to achieve sustainable fleet management. “We want to know how many vehicles of each type – diesel, electric or hydrogen – a haulage company needs to purchase and in which regions they should be deployed,” explains Christian Truden. In a recent publication, Christian Truden and Mike Hewitt (Quinlan School of Business, Loyola University Chicago) present a model that visualises two objectives: Both transport costs and environmental impact have to be taken into account. Christian Truden elaborates: “To date, we have been able to show that using this model can result in significant savings in costs and emissions.”

However, the model is not yet ready for use in practice, as the parameters and influencing factors are too numerous. In their next step, the research team will work on more efficient heuristics for solving the planning issue. “We aim to solve the problem that arises when using battery-electric and hydrogen-electric trucks in sufficiently good quality for realistic problem scenarios,” says Christian Truden.

Christian Truden & Mike Hewitt (2024). The service network design problem with fleet and emissions management. Transportation Research Part C 166, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trc.2024.104769.