A tree-based wall-building algorithm for solving container loading problem with multi-drop constraints

This paper presents a container loading algorithm for generating a container truck loading plan for a set of goods to be distributed to different retail outlets in one trip. This is a problem of container loading with multi-drop constraints. According to the destinations and travel plan of the truck, the set of goods items is divided into groups, one for each destination, and the groups are ordered according to the unloading order at the destinations. A general container loading algorithm is revised by replacing the layer loading strategy with a wall-building loading strategy in order to deal with the order of unloading destinations in the travel plan. The numerical analysis results have shown that the algorithm achieved satisfactory loading results in utilization of container space in comparison with the space utilization by human loading.