Resumen
Studies completed on the methods used to determine optimal delivery volumes of transit cargo have revealed major deficiencies. The available procedures do not fully reflect the real conditions of formation of transit cargo transportation tariffs depending on the delivery volumes: they do not take into account the discrete nature of building up and drawing from the stocks; they do not outline peculiar features of formation and spending of excessive stocks, which depend on the ratio of the delivery volumes and intervals and the volumes and frequency of stock shipment. The authors have developed a procedure to determine an optimal volume of deliveries between terminal complexes and the transit terminal with the minimum costs for transportation and temporary storage of transit cargos in stock. The authors suggest the use of the category ?cargo module? as a variable to reflect the discrete nature of the process of stock accumulation and distribution in models of calculation of transportation and storage costs. Considering the discrete nature of building up and drawing from the stocks in the terminal complex, the authors have outlined costs in the structure of their storage costs connected: with storage of the current stock in the course of its depletion between two adjoining deliveries with an interval during the entire delivery period; with maintenance of excessive delivery volumes; with storage of the accumulated stock in the course of its depletion after expiration of the delivery period and until expiration of the shipment period. This task is solved by the methods of searching of an extreme value of the target function at the set restrictions to the minimum and the maximum quantity of cargo modules. It was determined that the value of the aggregate costs for carriage and storage in stock will be 15.6% less than the aggregate costs for any other quantity of cargo modules.