Walmart Inc.
Methods and apparatus for load and route assignments in a delivery system

Abstract:

A load and route assignment system is provided and generally includes a computing device and a database. The database may store historical inbound load data and historical outbound load data related to previous inbound and outbound loads. The computing device can obtain and aggregate the historical inbound and outbound load data from the database, and determine an optimal path based on the aggregated historical data. The optimal path, along with load attribute data, may be stored in the database as a tour template for future load executions. The computing device may use the tour templates to determine future load assignments to vehicles. The computing device may also obtain real-time load requests, and match them to one or more of a plurality of tour templates. The computing device may assign the matched real-time load requests to a vehicle for execution in accordance with the corresponding load and tour template.