The vehicle routing problem has been widely studied from a
technical point of view for more than 50 years. Many of its variants
are rooted in practical settings. This paper provides a survey of the
main real-life applications of road-based goods transportation over
the past 15 years. It reviews papers in the areas of oil, gas and fuel
transportation, retail, waste collection and management, mail and
package delivery and food distribution. Some perspectives on
future research and applications are discussed
