This is the first paper on the Vehicle Routing Problem. A few years later (1964) Clarke and Wright proposed an effective greedy heuristic that improved on the Dantzig-Ramser approach (Clarke and Wright 1964). Since these two seminal papers hundreds of models and algorithms have been proposed for solving optimally or approximately various versions of the VRP. Vehicle Routing Problems (VRPs) are among the most important Combinatorial Optimisation problems, because of their difficulty as well as because of their practical relevance. Indeed they not only model the problems of collection and delivery of goods, but, more generally, appear as a key ingredient in many transportation systems, such as those for solid waste collection, street cleaning, bus routing, dial-a-ride systems, routing of maintenance units, transports for handicapped. Another area in which very similar problems play a relevant role is modern telecommunication networks, even if here we find "routing" and not "vehicle routing" problems. Many commercially available software packages exist. Exact algorithms are in general able to handle up to about 50 customers whereas effective heuristics are needed for larger instances.