Abstract
The fact that the transport costs directly affect the countries’ economies all around the world and that the transport costs increase depending on the energy resources steered the countries into developing combined transport strategies that will decrease the transport costs. In this study, an assessment is made for the selection of locations of the logistics centers which will contribute to decreasing the transport costs, develop logistics sector strategies in Turkey, and thereby enable to identify the strategies for the fastest, safest, and the most economic transport utilizing integration of modes of transport with each other. Nonetheless, an integrated logistics model which includes freight capacity and selection of the optimum location is proposed for the efficient and useful logistics center. In this logistics model, a freight model, which is a criterion for optimal location selection, has been obtained by using regression analysis. According to this freight model, freight carrying capacity is determined for each alternative region. Optimum location selection has been made utilizing AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process)-VIKOR (Vise Kriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje) method. We aim to contribute to the literature by making systematically estimating variable carrying capacities and by being decisive in the logistics center location selection. The proposed logistics model has been applied for a logistics center to be established, and effective and valid results have been obtained.