In 2012 about 23 percent of worldwide carbon dioxide emissions were caused by transportation. Therefore, it is desirable to improve the environmental sustainability of the transportation sector. In Germany a major part of road transportation is operated by small and medium sized enterprises...

Truck loading docks as a bottleneck and a logistics interface notoriously plagued with misunderstandings and scheduling issues recently came to the attention of research in the wake of the 2011 report of the German federal office for goods transport. At the truck loading dock the different...