The last decades have seen a tremendous amount of research being devoted to effectively managing vehicle fleets and minimizing empty mileage. However, in contrast to, e.g., the air transport sector, the question of how to best assign crews to vehicles, has received very little attention in the road transport sector. The vast majority of road freight transport in Europe is conducted by single drivers and team driving is often only conducted if there are special circumstances, e.g., security concerns. While it is clear that transport companies want to avoid the costs related to additional drivers, vehicles manned by a single driver sit unused whenever the driver takes a mandatory break or rest. Team drivers, on the other hand, can travel a much greater distance in the same amount of time, because mandatory breaks and rests are required less frequently. This paper investigates under which conditions trucking companies should use single or team driving to maximize their profitability. We present a novel optimization approach for simultaneously optimizing routes and crewing decisions and provide experimental evidence that, for a wide range of cost factors, operating a fleet with a mix of team and single drivers can significantly reduce operational costs when compared to typical profit margins in the sector.

在过去的几十年中，进行了大量研究，致力于有效地管理车队并最大程度地减少空载里程。然而，与例如航空运输部门相比，如何最好地分配机组人员到车辆的问题在道路运输部门中很少受到关注。欧洲的绝大多数公路货运都是由单人驾驶，而团队驾驶通常仅在特殊情况下（例如出于安全考虑）进行。显然，运输公司希望避免与额外驾驶员有关的费用，但只要驾驶员强制性休息或休息，由一名驾驶员驾驶的车辆便会闲置。另一方面，车队驾驶员可以在相同的时间内行驶更长的距离，因为强制性的休息和休息的频率较低。本文研究了在哪种条件下，货运公司应使用单人驾驶或团队驾驶来最大化其盈利能力。我们提供了一种同时优化路线和人员配置决策的新颖优化方法，并提供了实验证据，与多种典型的利润率相比，在多种成本因素下，由团队和单个驾驶员组成的车队可以显着降低运营成本该部门。