Empty container repositioning - a review

Empty container repositioning, arousing coincidentally with the container shipping business, shows its significance nowadays in container control area, in which one of the key issues is the balance of container load and empty container transportation. In this paper, we first took a worldwide glance at current status of empty container repositioning. Then a general review on the past researches of this topic was presented together with corresponding taxonomy and models. At last, we briefly analyze the reasons of empty container repositioning problem and propose several candidate directions for further study.