This book serves as a primer on freight transportation and logistics, providing a general and broad coverage of concepts, mathematical models and methodologies available for freight transportation planning at strategic, tactical and operational levels. It is aimed at graduate students, and is also a reference book for practitioners in the field. The book includes preliminaries, such as mathematical modeling and optimisation algorithms. The book also features case studies and practical real-life examples to illustrate applications of the concepts and models covered, and to encourage a hands-on and a practical approach. The author has taught and published extensively in the field and draw on state-of-the-art scientific research. He has also been part of a number of practical research projects, which underpin the real life examples in the book.

Trucking Country is a social history of long-haul trucking that explores the contentious politics of free-market capitalism in post-World War II America. Shane Hamilton paints an eye-opening portrait of the rural highways of the American heartland, and in doing so explains why working-class populist voters are drawn to conservative politicians who seemingly don't represent their financial interests. Hamilton challenges the popular notion of "red state" conservatism as a devil's bargain between culturally conservative rural workers and economically conservative demagogues in the Republican Party. The roots of rural conservatism, Hamilton demonstrates, took hold long before the culture wars and free-market fanaticism of the 1990s. As Hamilton shows, truckers helped build an economic order that brought low-priced consumer goods to a greater number of Americans. They piloted the big rigs that linked America's factory farms and agribusiness food processors to suburban supermarkets across the country. Trucking Country is the gripping account of truckers whose support of post-New Deal free enterprise was so virulent that it sparked violent highway blockades in the 1970s. It's the story of "bandit" drivers who inspired country songwriters and Hollywood filmmakers to celebrate the "last American cowboy," and of ordinary blue-collar workers who helped make possible the deregulatory policies of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan and set the stage for Wal-Mart to become America's most powerful corporation in today's low-price, low-wage economy. Some images inside the book are unavailable due to digital copyright restrictions.

Applying sophisticated management techniques to freight transport offers the potential for significant cost savings as well as greater efficiency. Yet the inherent complexity of intermodal transport presents many challenges. This practical textbook on the operations of intermodal transport and logistics focuses on the practical concerns and the basics of operations, such as vehicles, containers, handling operations, logistics management and optimisation. All chapters are written by field specialists, and the volume includes additional chapters on economics, law and the environment to put the practical topics into context. It presents a balanced textbook for postgraduate students and also a reference text for those in industry or the public sector involved in the planning of intermodal freight transport.

International Freight Transport presents the key changes and issues in the fast-moving industries of trade and transport. It includes coverage of regional trade groupings, the emergence of new large economies (i.e. BRIC countries), and pivotal regions such as the Middle East and Central America where major projects, such as new and widened canals, are underway or planned. These changes could redraw the trade map with major implications for transport patterns and solutions. Blending geography, economics, politics and trade, International Freight Transport provides insight into a wide range of topics, including: globalisation; demand versus supply; buyers and sellers; transport regulation, geography, modes and methods; transport ownership; alliances; and safety and security. The book is the only comprehensive and accessible book on international transport available.

Urban Freight Transportation Systems offers new insights into the complexities of today's urban freight transport system. It provides a much needed multidisciplinary perspective from researchers in not only transportation, but also engineering, business management, planning and the law. The book examines numerous critical issues, such as strategies for delivery, logistics and freight transport spatial patterns, urban policy assessment, innovative transportation technologies, urban hubs, and the role factories play in the urban freight transport system. The book offers a novel conceptual approach for addressing the problems of production, logistics and traffic in an urban context. As most of the world's population now live in cities, thus significantly increasing commercial traffic, there are numerous challenges for efficiently and sustainably delivering goods into cities. This book provides solutions and tactics to those challenges.

This title addresses the need to develop new freight transport models and scientific tools to provide sound solutions that consider the wide range of internal and external impacts. The international contributions push forward frontiers in freight transport modelling and analysis.