Research Article

Transportation Service Procurement Bid Construction Problem from Less Than Truckload Perspective

Algorithm 1

Solution approach to proposed model.
Input: Booked and auctioned loads, i.e. and ;
Loaded and empty movement costs, i.e., ;
Current transportation network.
Output: Generated bids with prices;
Expected benefits for carrier.
Calculate current transportation network total costs;
Generate particles, with each particle including one lane bundle randomly chosen from the auctioned loads;
for for each particle do
Determine the optimal transportation plan under consideration of the constraints in the proposed model;
Calculate the cost of the new transportation plan;
Calculate the incremetal costs of the transportation tasks on the chosen lane bundles ;
Generate the price for the chosen lane set based on the incremental costs ;
Compare the auction price by carrier and the shipper’s costs for personally handling the services;
Calculate the possibility that the carrier wins the bid ;
Calculate the expected benefit from lane bundle with price and take this as the fitness value for this particle;
Set this particle as personal best particle ;
  end for
Determine the particle with the maximum benefit and set as the global best particle ;
  for   to   do
Update the particle velocities and positions using Eq. (24);
Repeat to ;
for for each particle do
   if if the current fitness value is larger than that of the personal best particle , then; then
Set current particle as personal best particle ;
end if
end for
Determine the particle with the maximum benefit and compare the fitness value with that of the global best particle ;
if The fitness value larger than that of global best particle ; then
Set this particle as global best particle ;
end if
end for
Output the global best particle, including lane bundle and price and the expected benefit.