Selecting a Rational Scheme of Delivery by Road Transport: A Case Study of Goods Deliveries from China to Russia through Kazakhstan

Road transport is in most cases the only available transport option in rural regions with undeveloped railway infrastructure. The problem of choosing the structure of the logistics chain is one of the most important ones that forwarding companies must solve when planning freight transportation. Due to political peculiarities, transportation of goods by road through the territory of Kazakhstan must be carried out by national forwarders, which results in centralizing the decision-making process and shifting the tasks of designing the structure of supply chains to the Kazakh forwarding companies. In this paper, we develop a mathematical model to solve the problem of choosing the right structure for a logistics chain. The proposed model considers the existing legal constraints in the region. Based on a simulated demand for cargo deliveries from China to Russia, we use a numerical example to show how to justify the structure of the logistics chain characterized by minimal total costs of the companies involved in the delivery process.