In brief
Planning a transport day does not simply mean matching an order with a truck and a driver. To understand whether the plan makes sense, at least three levels of information are needed:
- a proposal for organising orders and resources;
- an indicative estimate of the time and distance for the run;
- the context of the driver’s hours for the person who will carry it out.
In TrucksOut, these three levels correspond to Planning AI Lite, ETA Lite and Driver Hours.
They can be useful individually. Their greatest value, however, comes when they are read within the same process: first build a proposal, then check how demanding the run is and finally compare that information with the driver’s situation.
This does not mean delegating planning to an algorithm. It means giving the dispatcher more context before the final decision.
Real planning has more dimensions than a table
A Trip Plan can look orderly and still be unrealistic.
A simple example:
- four deliveries are assigned to the same truck;
- the driver is available;
- all orders fit into the day;
- visually, the sequence looks correct.
But one question is missing: how much time does that run actually require?
And another follows immediately: how does that time fit into the driver’s operational context?
This is where it makes sense to stop treating planning, route and hours as three separate sheets.
1. Planning AI Lite: start from a proposal rather than from scratch
Planning AI Lite helps create an initial planning proposal from the operational information already available.
Its role is very precise: to prepare a basis for review.
It does not automatically save the Trip Plan and it does not replace the dispatcher. The proposal can be changed before final saving.
This matters because, in reality, there is always information that a system may not fully know: customer preferences, phone agreements, driver habits, last-minute priorities or simply operational experience.
So the goal is not to magically find “the perfect plan”. It is to reduce the work required to arrive at a sensible first version.
Discover the Planning AI Lite add-on →
2. ETA Lite: understand how demanding the run is
Once the sequence has been built, a second piece of information is needed: the route.
ETA Lite adds an indicative estimate of travel time and distance for the operational run to the Trip Plan.
This makes it possible to read the proposal through a further question:
Is the sequence we have built compatible with the time it requires?
If the order of activities changes, the estimate can also be recalculated for the new sequence.
ETA Lite is not a navigation system and does not provide a guaranteed arrival time. Traffic, stops, waiting at customers’ premises and unforeseen events can change the actual result. It should be used as an operational reference for planning.
Discover the ETA Lite add-on →
3. Driver Hours: add the driver’s context
The third level concerns the person who will carry out the trip.
Driver Hours gathers operational information about attendance and driving hours and makes it available in the planning flow. The information can be updated from the dashboard and, in the intended flow, also from the Android app.
The point is not to turn TrucksOut into a tachograph or a regulatory-certification tool.
The point is to prevent the dispatcher from having to move from the Trip Plan to a separate sheet, a message or memory to reconstruct the driver’s situation.
TrucksOut helps organise operational information and activities. It does not replace the tachograph, mandatory tools, company checks or responsibilities required by the applicable rules.
Discover the Driver Hours add-on →
When the three tools work together
The flow therefore becomes:
orders + trucks + drivers → initial proposal → estimate of the run → check of the driver context → review → save
Each module adds a different question.
| Tool | Question it helps answer |
|---|---|
| Planning AI Lite | What proposal can I start from? |
| ETA Lite | How demanding is this run likely to be? |
| Driver Hours | What is the driver’s operational context? |
The combination does not eliminate the dispatcher’s work. It focuses it on exceptions and decisions rather than manually reconstructing information.
A practical example
Imagine a small fleet with three trucks, three drivers and eight activities to organise.
Step 1 — The proposal
Planning AI Lite prepares an initial distribution of orders among the available resources.
The dispatcher immediately sees a basis to start from and can already move anything that does not seem right.
Step 2 — The run time
For one of the combinations, ETA Lite shows that the planned sequence will likely require much more time than the others.
This does not mean that the proposal is automatically wrong. It means that it deserves attention.
The dispatcher can change the sequence or move an activity and recalculate the reference.
Step 3 — The driver’s context
Before confirming, the information on recorded hours for the assigned driver is also consulted.
At this point, the dispatcher has three pieces of information in the same process: what to do, how demanding the run may be and what the driver’s context is.
The final decision remains theirs.
More assistance should not mean less control
For TrucksOut, the point is not to build software that tells the dispatcher, “this is the plan and you cannot change it”.
The experience of those who organise transport still matters because a small company lives on exceptions, customer knowledge and the ability to react to changes.
Technology is useful when it eliminates repetitive steps and brings the right information to the moment of decision.
This is why the logic of the three add-ons is complementary:
- Planning AI Lite prepares a proposal;
- ETA Lite adds an estimate for the run;
- Driver Hours adds the driver’s context;
- the dispatcher checks, edits and saves the final plan.
If you want to explore the individual tools, start with the three dedicated pages: Planning AI Lite, ETA Lite and Driver Hours.