Network concentration indices for less-than-truckload transportation

An efficient and service-oriented transportation network is a necessary resource for successful less-than-truckload operations. The design and evaluation of transportation networks are mainly driven by quantitative particularly cost-oriented measures, such as transport and transshipment costs. This type of measurement, however, simply cannot represent the manifold performance of a transportation network. In particular, incorporating network concentration into network design decisions overcomes the shortcomings of purely cost-oriented decisions because spatial network concentration is at the root of many aspects of network performance (e.g., congestion and network vulnerability). This paper suggests modifications to the network concentration index and the hubbing concentration index from the passenger airline context for less-than-truckload road transportation. The modified indices enable information to be conveyed by network concentration into less-than-truckload network design decisions and provide a suitable perspective to include service-oriented aspects into network design.