Balancing Risks and Monetary Savings When the Crowd is Involved in Pickups and Deliveries

The increasing number of requests in the last-mile delivery has led to the introduction of advanced technological solutions to enhance couriers’ services. In addition, innovative strategies like crowd-shipping have been introduced in order to create synergies within the territory and involve ordinary people in the transportation activity with the aim of reducing operational costs and pollution as well as of increasing the service level. We refer to a company that manages a crowd-shipping platform and provides transportation services within time windows through its own fleet of vehicles and occasional drivers. The service requests correspond to pairs of pickups and deliveries. The objective of the company is to maximize the profit by balancing risks and benefits, from an economic perspective, associated with the involvement of ordinary people in fulfilling service requests. We extend the pickup and delivery problem with occasional drivers and regular vehicles, introducing risk and compensation considerations. The computational analysis conducted through an optimization model shows how the use of occasional drivers reduces overall costs. Moreover, a series of managerial insights is provided thanks to a sensitivity analysis on the risk and compensation parameters associated with crowd-shipping service.