The Vehicle routing Problem (VRP) was introduced 50 years ago by Dantzig and Ramser under the title "The Truck Dispatching Problem". The study of the VRP has given rise to major developments in the fields of exact algorithms and heuristics. In particular, highly sophisticated exact mathematical programming decomposition algorithms and powerful metaheuristics for the VRP have been put forward in recent years. The purpose of this article is to provide a brief account of this development.