Rows of coaches parked in a depot seen from aboveRegional fleet business · Allocation engine

The problem

The group’s operators ran on separate scheduling systems, so nobody could see the whole fleet. When a depot could not cover a job, staff rang round the other depots one by one. Each uncovered job cost 30 to 60 minutes of several people’s time, and depots handed back accepted work days later, sometimes dozens of jobs in a day. A Friday handback for Monday meant subcontracting at premium rates.

Coaches drove past each other’s depots. In one case, a coach was about to run an airport job from 40 miles away while a sister company’s coach was already at the airport. One director described the cross-depot waste as substantial. Within each depot, placing jobs on vehicles and drivers took most of a working week, all by hand.

How it works

One live picture of the group fleet feeds a system that allocates from it. For every won job it proposes what a planner works out by hand today: the vehicle, based on the gap in the schedule, the nearest depot by empty miles and how scarce that vehicle type is; the driver, based on licence, hours and the local rules that only the planners know; and the driver’s start time. Licence and hours are checked before the job is confirmed. A planner reviews and can override.

Work that no depot can cover goes to a central subcontracting queue, priced to subcontract so peak jobs stop running at cost. Vehicle scarcity feeds back into quote pricing.

  • Availability across every depot answered in seconds
  • Vehicle proposed on schedule gap, empty miles and scarcity
  • Driver proposed on licence, hours and local knowledge rules
  • Start time calculated; expired licences and short hours blocked
  • Handbacks priced and reasoned in a central queue
Allocation engine · job 4471
63vehicles free on 14 Mar, of 452
2jobs uncovered this week
0.6 sto answer “can we cover this?”
Brighton school trip · Sat 14 Mar · 49 seats · pickup Reading 08:00
Coach 27 · Reading depot12 dead miles · Driver J. Patel, hours OK · start 07:20
Recommended
Coach 09 · Slough depot38 dead miles · Driver free · start 06:50
Available
Coach 41 · Croydon depot61 dead miles · Driver licence expires 12 Mar
Blocked
Confirm allocationSend to subcontract queue
Concept: The allocation screen. Candidates ranked by dead miles and driver availability, with a licence problem blocked before confirmation. Sample data.

The results

£>0.5Ma year, conservative case
Secondsto answer “can we cover this?” across the group
Daysof planner time a week per brand replaced by a review
  • Planners see every vehicle and driver in the group, not just their own depot.
  • Jobs run from the nearest depot, so fewer empty miles at £3 or more each.
  • Every handback carries a price and a reason, so peak work is no longer subcontracted at cost.
  • Licence and hours are checked before a job is confirmed.