Problem of Transshipment in Travel Forecasting: Model of Tour Structures

The concept of the transshipment of goods has not been widely incorporated into models for transportation planning. A model with transshipment should recognize that a whole shipment could be transported in two or more stages involving intermediate points (transshipment points) between the origin and the final destination. The database containing data from the Ontario, Canada, Commercial Vehicle Survey is one of the few databases that contains substantial transshipment information. The analysis of the Ontario Commercial Vehicle Survey first focused on commodities and their origin–destination facilities and defined terminals and warehouses as possible transshipment locations. Analysis revealed that any commodity was likely to be transshipped through either a truck terminal or a warehouse. Eight tour structures could be ascertained from the database, with each structure differing in the order and number of transshipment points and previous customers. A choice model of those tour structures was built. Factors such as commodity type, origin–destination facility type, truck type, distance, and shipment size were significant, depending on the structure.