The impact of collaborative backhaul routing on carbon reduction in the freight industry

The study investigates a practical freight carrier collaboration problem in a carbon-constrained business context. It examines to see if collaboration between carriers can reduce the environmental issues of freight movement. The introduction of carbon credit systems will stimulate freight carriers to decide whether it should trade carbon credits with its collaborators. This issue is examined by formulating the problem as a two-stage stochastic program to minimize the joint emission of the carriers while meeting their service commitments. The collaborative model developed can reduce emissions across a freight network by 3–20%.