Hiring seasonal driver helpers is one widely used approach by parcel delivery companies to deal with increased home‐delivery volumes during peak seasons. Nonetheless, driver helper‐related issues have not received much attention in academic research. This study investigates how driver helpers can be utilized in the most effective way by parcel delivery companies. We show that by separating a parcel delivery route into two sub‐routes, namely “no‐helper” and “with‐helper” routes, the utilization rates of driver helpers can be improved, and the carrier cost be reduced considerably. Three main contributions of this study are as follows. First, based on costtrade‐off insights, we develop a new mathematical model for the last‐mile distribution problem, which we call the Driver Helper Dispatching Problem. Second, using this mathematical model, we perform a series of numerical experiments to identify the conditions under which the proposed “split‐route solution” works most or least effectively. Finally, we perform sensitivity analyses to investigate the impact that changes in model parameters, such as fuel cost, would have on study results.

中文翻译：

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最后一英里：管理驱动程序帮助程序的包裹递送服务分发

雇用季节性驾驶员帮手是​​包裹递送公司广泛使用的一种方法，用于应对高峰季节的家庭交付量增加。但是，与驾驶员助手相关的问题在学术研究中并未受到太多关注。这项研究调查了包裹递送公司如何最有效地利用驾驶员助手。我们表明，通过将包裹运送路线分为“无人”和“有人”两个子路线，可以提高司机的使用率，并显着降低运输成本。这项研究的三个主要贡献如下。首先，基于成本折衷的见解，我们针对最后一英里的配送问题开发了一个新的数学模型，我们将其称为“驾驶员帮助者配送问题”。其次，使用这个数学模型，我们进行了一系列数值实验，以确定在何种条件下拟议的“分割路线解决方案”可以最有效或最不有效地发挥作用。最后，我们进行敏感性分析，以研究模型参数变化（例如燃料成本）对研究结果的影响。