Use of maneuvering vehicles to reduce downtime in turnaround points

When delivering goods to big cities and agglomerations, transport operators face a problem of long downtime during loading and off-loading because of queuing, as well as due to the fact that a sender begins to prepare cargo only after a vehicle for relevant operations is provided. Transportation to Moscow is associated with an additional problem, the need to wait for the allowed time to enter the city. In order to reduce the downtime of the rolling stock for loading and unloading operations, it was proposed to use a fleet of maneuvering tow trucks with a permanent permit to enter a city. To substantiate the economic feasibility, a comparison to costs when using maneuvering road-trains was performed. The determining of the optimal size of the maneuvering vehicle fleet should be made taking into account the number of serviced line-haul trains and the length of the hauling distance. Several variants of the initial data are considered, and the dependence is established of the optimal number of maneuvering vehicles on the required amount of work taking into account economic indicators.