AbstractVehicle routing techniques which have offered fascinating combinatorial problems to the academic operational research worker, become of real concern to practitioners of Operational Research as managements become increasingly aware of the need to control the rising costs of the physical distribution activity. The systematic construction of efficient vehicle route structures for local delivery operations provides an important tool for the control of costs in the short-term, for adapting the vehicle fleet size and composition in the medium-term, and even for the location of depots in the longer term.The bases of the many heuristic algorithms which have been proposed in the literature for the design of efficient vehicle route structures are critically appraised. The issues which arise when integrating such techniques into an operational setting are described in the light of the real needs of management. It is concluded that the design of "flexible fixed routes" is the real target which only a few of the many algorithms can approach.