Bulky waste collection on request: which truck collects which pickup
Which truck collects which booked pickup in which order, so every pickup is in its booked window with few kilometres and few trips to the recycling yard?
Drag to rotate, right-drag or shift-drag to move the map, scroll or pinch to zoom. The bar above each truck shows its load. Click a truck or a pickup to find its row in the schedule; hover a bar for details. Plan computed with a Timefold model.
The planning question
A fictional waste company collects bulky waste on request. A household books a pickup, says what it puts out (for example a sofa, a wardrobe or a washing machine) and chooses a window: morning 07:00 to 11:00 or afternoon 11:00 to 15:00. On this day 80 households have booked, 42 of them in the morning, with 1 to 5 m³ each and 174 m³ in all.
Four box trucks with a tail lift and a crew of two start at 06:30 at the depot, which is also the recycling yard. A truck takes 28 m³ and 3.8 t per load. When the next pickup would not fit, it drives to the recycling yard and unloads: weighing, then tipping by material, 20 minutes. A crew works at most 9 hours including a 30 minute break.
Assumptions for this example: loading takes 4 minutes plus 3 minutes per booked m³, and the volume a household books is the volume it takes on the truck. Travel times are truck times on real roads from OpenStreetMap, plus 2 minutes per stop to turn into the street and park. Depot, households and bookings are fictional.
How we plan it
The Timefold model plans each truck as a list of pickups. For every change it follows the day: drive times on the road network, waiting when a truck is early, the loading time, the load after every stop by volume and weight, the drive to the recycling yard when the next pickup no longer fits, and the break. A pickup after its window and a crew day over 9 hours are hard violations. Among valid plans, the model weighs truck kilometres at 1.10 € per km, crew time at 1.07 € per minute for two people and 15 € per unloading.
The comparison is a plan with fixed districts, computed with the same simulation. The area is cut once into four districts around the yard, one per truck. Each truck collects the morning bookings of its district first and then the afternoon bookings, each in booking order. The Timefold plan starts from these tours and improves them for 2 minutes.
What the plan shows
| KPI | Optimized plan | Comparison: fixed districts, pickups in booking order |
|---|---|---|
| pickups on time | 100 % +20 | 80 % |
| truck kilometres | 411 km −418 | 829 km |
| trips to the yard | 7 −1 | 8 |
Decisions
- truck for each booked pickup
- order of the pickups on each truck, and with it when a truck drives to the recycling yard to unload
Constraints
- booked windows: morning 07:00 to 11:00, afternoon 11:00 to 15:00
- truck capacity: 28 m³ and 3.8 t per load, unloading at the recycling yard in 20 minutes
- crew working time: at most 9 hours from 06:30 including a 30 minute break
Objective
every pickup in its window, then few kilometres, few trips to the recycling yard and short crew days
Questions
Why are pickups late in the district plan?
The districts are fixed, the bookings are not. On this day one district has 22 bookings and another 17. In booking order a truck crosses its district several times: Truck 1 drives 261 km and is still on the road at 17:52, and 16 of 80 pickups are after their window. The plan lets trucks work across district borders in a route order. All 80 pickups are on time, and the last truck is back at 15:21.
Why does the plan still need 7 trips to the yard?
The 174 m³ of the day need at least 7 loads of 28 m³. The district plan needs 8: every truck needs two loads, and the second loads hold only 12 to 22 m³. In the plan three trucks unload once between 10:15 and 10:30 and again at the end of the day, and one truck needs a single load.
Does the weight matter?
On this day every load is full by volume first. No load weighs more than 2.3 t of the 3.8 t allowed. The model checks both, because on days with much wood or many appliances the weight decides.
Can it plan new bookings during the day?
In a project, yes. Pickups already done stay fixed, a new booking or a truck that breaks down is planned into the open part of the day.
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