Measuring Concentration in Less-than-Truckload Networks

An efficient and service-oriented transportation network is a necessary resource for successful less-than-truckload operations. The design, as well as the evaluation, of transportation networks is mainly driven by quantitative in particular cost-oriented measures, such as transport and transshipment costs. Spatial network centrality is often neglected in transportation network design, even though network centrality is at the root of many aspects of network performance, for instance schedule reliability and terminal congestion. This paper suggests modifications of the Gini-based network concentration index as well as the hubbing concentration index from the passenger airline context to the less-than-truckload road transportation context. The modified indices assess the concentration of a less-thantruckload network and allow incorporating centrality in a structured way into transportation network design. They provide aggregated information on structural aspects of a network and are thus a starting point for network evaluation and further examination. This paper presents a comparison of network scenarios, which illustrates how the indices provide relevant information for network design decisions.