Optimal a Priori Tour and Restocking Policy for the Single-Vehicle Routing Problem with Stochastic Demands

•Unified model for computing optimal a priori tours and restocking policies.•Measurement of the drawbacks associated with the reactive detour-to-depot policy.•Simple and effective heuristic method for solving larger instances of the problem.•Experiments with varying vehicle load factors and demand probability distributions.•Conditions under which the strategy of a priori cost minimization is near optimal.