Cooperation, reliability, and matching in inland freight transport

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Container transport allowed for global trade, and trade has lifted the welfare and fostered the development of nations worldwide. The exchange of goods required the movements of those along a chain of parties and companies. While intercontinental transport sustains global trade, the inland transport sector plays a critical role in regions' and countries' competitive performance. This thesis focuses on inland container and bulk transport, the first and end part of the intercontinental journey, which connects production areas to ports, and ports to warehouses and last-mile distribution.

In this setting, this research addresses the challenge of improving transport performance by focusing on the utilization of transport capacity given immutable transport demand, technology, and infrastructure. A particular focus is on the plan of transport execution and its effect on transport capacity utilization. From such a problem perspective, three main solutions are studied: first, cooperation among transport operators as a way for companies to improve their capacity utilization by demand pooling and supply sharing; second, advanced transport planning models based on adaptive decisions that are cost-efficient while guaranteeing a certain level of reliability as a way to improve capacity utilization when transport times are uncertain; third, matching algorithms for digital transport marketplaces as a way to improve the utilization of capacity by effectively match demand and supply.