How Is Dispatch Planning Done?

Dispatch planning is the process of deciding which vehicle carries which orders, in what order. The input is a list of orders; the output is a plan — how many vehicles, which jobs, in what sequence.

Thirty jobs and twenty vehicles cannot be solved in your head. The planner applies the first sensible split, and the wasted kilometres inside that split usually stay invisible — you find out only after the trip is over, when nothing can be done about it.

What steps make up dispatch planning?

The process has four steps: collect unassigned orders, read the constraints and vehicle availability, prepare a plan, approve and apply it. The order matters — a plan built before constraints are read comes back broken from the field.

These four steps can be run by hand, and in small fleets they usually are. The problem shows up at scale — as the number of vehicles and orders grows, holding steps 2 and 3 in your head stops being possible.

Which constraints get missed most often in planning?

Three constraints get skipped most: real road distance, vehicle capacity, and working hours. All three look "roughly right" on paper and break the plan in the field.

On distance, the most common mistake is the straight-line estimate. A route that looks like 40 kilometres as the crow flies can be 55 kilometres on the real road network — a difference that directly changes how many jobs a vehicle can complete in a day.

On capacity, the mistake is confusing units. A vehicle can sit well under its weight limit while its volume or loading metres are already full — a vehicle that looks like it has "room" on paper gets a new job it cannot actually carry.

Working hours are the least discussed constraint and the most often violated. A driver's daily driving and rest time is limited by law; if planning ignores that limit, the plan can look finished on paper while the driver physically cannot complete it in one day.

There is a fourth, quieter constraint: the odds of a return load. When you assign a vehicle to a job, you also have to think about where it returns from — a route with a high chance of finding a return load and one with a low chance should not carry the same weight in the plan.

What mistakes does manual planning repeat most?

Two mistakes repeat: applying the first sensible split, and keeping that split in one person's head. Both stay invisible in a small fleet and turn into real cost as the fleet grows.

The first sensible split means picking the first match that comes to mind, not the most efficient one. When spreading thirty jobs across twenty vehicles, the planner applies the first workable pairing available — that pairing is rarely the most efficient one, just the one that came to mind at that moment.

Keeping the decision in one person's head causes a coordination failure. If two planners are working the same day and the plan doesn't live somewhere shared, the same job can be assigned to two different vehicles — an error caught only after the vehicle has left is the most expensive one to fix.

Who runs dispatch planning?

In a small fleet, one person both plans and executes. As the fleet grows, the work splits into three roles: planner, operations lead, and manager. Each looks at the plan from a different angle.

This split pays off most with urgent jobs. An operations lead can request a fast suggestion for one job that came in mid-day, without re-planning the whole fleet.

Does automated planning take away control?

No, not in a properly built system. Automation's job is to prepare the decision, not to make it — the final approval stays with the planner.

Seferi Optima runs this calculation in the background: by default it evaluates unassigned orders every fifteen minutes, calculates on real road and traffic data, and respects vehicle capacity and working-hour constraints. It never applies the result on its own — it shows you the plan, you approve it. And once applied, you can undo it within fifteen seconds.

The plan runs as a single company-wide copy: when one planner applies a suggestion, that same suggestion automatically closes for everyone else. That removes the risk of two people assigning the same job to two different vehicles.

Once a vehicle is chosen, driver assignment usually follows on its own — whoever drives that vehicle takes on the jobs assigned to it. The job reaches the driver's phone through the Driver Mobile App, with address, load details and sequence on one screen.

What does a good dispatch plan achieve?

Three concrete results matter: the same work gets done with fewer vehicles and fewer kilometres, the decision stays with one person, and the same job never gets assigned twice. Both are directly measurable — through jobs per vehicle and kilometres driven empty.

Empty kilometres and dispatch planning are two sides of the same coin: a poorly planned route goes to waste even when a return load exists. A well-built plan fills the vehicle while also weighing the odds of a return trip.

The result shows up financially too. When the same work is done with fewer vehicles, profit per vehicle rises; the kilometre and fuel savings flow straight into trip cost.

Is vehicle and driver assignment different from dispatch planning?

No, they're two sides of the same decision. Dispatch planning decides which job goes to which vehicle; assignment is that decision put into effect. Driver assignment usually follows the vehicle — whoever drives it takes on the jobs assigned to it. It isn't a separate process, it's the last step of the same plan.

Can dispatch planning be done in Excel?

With a small number of vehicles, yes — but as constraints multiply (capacity, working hours, delivery windows), tracking it by hand gets harder. We covered where Excel breaks down in a separate article; the short version: the spreadsheet holds the data but doesn't show you a conflict when two people edit it at once.