A pickup segment is defined to be any two consecutive PICKUP stops in a route. (A route or load with only a single PICKUP stop has no pickup segments.)
The optimiser can optionally apply a penalty based on the pickup segments in a route. This penalty has two components: a fixed component based on the number of pickup segments in the route and a variable component proportional to the transit distance along the pickup segments. These penalties take the form of an additional hidden cost.
The pickup segment penalty is useful for “shaping” the route. The fixed component of the penalty may be used to reduce the number of pickup stops per load, while the variable component may be used to encourage the optimiser to cluster pickups more closely together.
The pickup segment penalty is only applied if the Batched Loads parameter is enabled.