[kragen]

Many of the fundamental algorithms used were developed during the 1980s and 1990s, as were modeling languages like AMPL. So it's not 1950s math, even if the "simplex algorithm" was discovered in 1947.

It occurs to me that such a "service" could to a significant extent pick winners and losers among transportation companies; whoever they chose to plan for would have lower costs by several percent, and so would have profits several times higher than the competition.