Study On Cost Allocation And Alliance Stability Of Less-Than-Truckload Transportation Collaboration

With the price of oil increasing and competition in less-than-truckload market becoming fiecer, more and more less-than-truckload (LTL) companies (both shippers and carriers) seek to cooperate with other LTL companies (even competitors) to reduce cost. It is under this circumstance that this thesis studies cost allocation problems of collaboration in LTL transportation and alliance stability with competition. The main work and conclusions of this thesis include:(1) Shipment consolidation is widely used by LTL companies. This thesis first studies collaboration among LTL companies under shipment consolidation policies with complete information. Through applying cooperative game theory, the cost allocation problem is discussed under time policy based collaboration and quantity policy based collaboration, respectively. The choice of different shipment consolidation policies is discussed as well.(2) Then, this thesis studies mechanism design problem for time policy based LTL collaboration with incomplete information. Mechanism design theory is applied to design a cost allocation mechanism, which satisfies incentive compatibility, individual rationality, and approximate budget balance. Furthermore, a simulation is conducted to analyze cost savings brought by collaboration and the efficiency of the cost allocation mechanisms proposed.(3) Last but not least, this thesis considers carriers collaboration with competition. This thesis first discusses how collaboration affects competition outcomes among carriers from the perspective of non-cooperative game theory. Then, from the perspective of cooperative game theory, the concept of largest consistent set (LCS) theory is applied to analyze the stability of different coalition structures. Particularly, this paper focuses on how substitutability affects the stable coalition structure. Finally, a numerical example is conducted to illustrate how different coalition structures affect social welfare.All in all, through research of the above issues, this thesis not only provides some practical insights to LTL companies regargarding whether to join a coalition or not and how to divide the joint cost is collaboration is estabilished, but also promotes the development of cooperative game theory.