The Supply Pattern for a Fleet of Vehicles Regularly Operating on a Fixed Route

Abstract

In studying the supply pattern of goods delivered to a depot by a fleet of vehicles all operating from a common source of supply on an identical route, it is necessary to assess the statistical properties of the times between the arrivals of the vehicles at the depot. This would seem to depend critically on the journey-time distribution, i.e. the distribution of times taken from the depot to collect the goods and return to the depot. This paper demonstrates, however, that this is not necessarily true, and that very often the interarrival-time distribution is essentially independent of the detailed form of the journey-time distribution. The only knowledge required in such situations is the mean, and minimum possible, journey-time; two quantities which are usually quite well known.