Multi-Depot Vehicle Fleet Planning with Trucks and Aerial Drones

In the context of parcel delivery, aerial drones have great potential that comes especially true in rural areas. In combination with truck deliveries drones can be launched from trucks, microdepots or a city distribution center (CDC). We develop a decision support model that decides on the cost-minimal integration of aerial drones in a current vehicle fleet with trucks of a logistics service provider. The problem setting is modeled as a mixed-integer linear program, which allows to assess the benefits of different transport concepts as well as the impact of mixing different delivery modes. We present a short numerical case study that demonstrates the applicability of the modeling and solution approach suggested.