Investigating Freight Uncertainties to Improve Truckload Operational Efficiency**

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This project addresses freight uncertainty, one of the major issues that Cargo County Group (the industry partner), is facing in its daily operations. Freight uncertainty exists as clients have the option to reschedule or cancel their requests before the service starts. These last-minute changes negatively impact the company's operational performance significantly as they force the company to move its trucks empty between different locations (cities). This is not only detrimental to the company economically, but it is also harmful to the environment, as it results in higher CO2 emissions from inefficient truck movements.****The key innovation of this project is in its development of a decision-making mechanism that considers the existing freight uncertainty in the industry partner's operations. This mechanism attempts to utilize advanced algorithms of stochastic optimization to investigate the uncertainties in the customers' behavior (i.e., order cancellation or rescheduling). To develop such a mechanism, Cargo County Group (an asset-based carrier) in collaboration with its academic partner (Ryerson University) have started their work on this project. The outcome will not only bring economic benefits to the company, but it will also improve its environmental performance by decreasing its contribution to air pollution.