3. Container transportation at Shanghai's port: Among the top 10 container ports in the world, seven are located in China, including the world's largest container port in the world in Shanghai. The large volume of the container throughput in these Chinese ports not only brings immense pressure for improving their operational efficiency, but also creates a large demand for transportation between theports and the hinterland. Yunfeng International Logistics (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., established in 2002, is one of the largest con- tainer transport service providers in Shanghai. The company specializes in container transportation between port yards and the hinterland as its core business. It serves a diverse clientele that includes globally renowned companies such as IKEA, Lenovo, and China Ocean Shipping Company. The scheduling problem faced by Yunfeng is that of how to allocate vehicles (including both owned and third-party vehicles) to complete order tasks (including door-to-door and warehouse orders) and minimize total cost. The complexities of this problem manifest in several aspects. (i) The pickup/delivery process has two distinct stops: one for container handling and the another for load- ing/unloading goods into the container. (ii) Traffic flows on roads in China are notoriously complex with the country imposing stringent regulations on road transportation based on factors such as vehi- cle dimensions, weight, and number of trailers. (iii) Time window constraints apply to both containers and cargo within the containers, with potential nested time windows creating intricate interactions between container handling and cargo handling times (e.g., the time window of container pickup is from 6 to 11am and cargo loading is from 10am to 12 pm). (a) Yunfeng International Logistics customers include IKEA and Lenovo. (b) Time at which the assigned vehicle will deliver the container to the customer (c) Time window in which the vehicle must deliver the container the customer (d) The vehicle assigned to a customer must deliver the container in the stated time window. (e) Whether a given container will be delivered by a vehicle owned by the company, or not. (f) Whether a given container will be delivered by a third-part company, or not. (g) Each container must be delivered to its associated customer. (h) Yunfeng International Logistics wants to minimize total cost.