A van full of clean linen at a locked back door
Your driver arrives at a restaurant at half past eleven with clean tablecloths, napkins and chef's whites. The kitchen only takes deliveries before half ten, because after that the pass is busy and nobody will come to the door. The driver waits, rings, gives up, and moves on. The restaurant runs short at dinner.
The next day, the van turns up at a hotel that closed its restaurant for a two-week refit. The general manager emailed about it a month ago. The email went to the account manager, who has since left.
Then the bank holiday arrives, and half the accounts want their Monday delivery on Saturday instead, while the others want nothing at all. The office works it out on the Thursday before, with a printed list and a highlighter.
Delivery rules live in drivers' heads
Each commercial account has its own rules: a receiving window, a door to use, a person to sign, a day it is closed. Experienced drivers know them. The system that plans the rounds usually knows only the address and the delivery days.
- Receiving windows are known by the regular driver, not recorded.
- Closures and refits are emailed to whoever the customer knows.
- Bank holiday changes are planned from scratch each time.
- Access notes (loading bay code, side door, security desk) are on scraps of paper in the van.
- Cover drivers and new drivers repeat every mistake once.
Wasted runs and customers caught short
Every missed window is a wasted trip and a second delivery. Worse, it leaves a hotel or restaurant without linen at service time, which is the one thing a commercial laundry is paid to prevent. Closure days that are not recorded waste a delivery and, if the stock is left at a closed site, can lose it. Holiday planning takes the office's time every few months and still produces errors.
How we build a delivery calendar for each account
- Each account gets receiving windows by day, access notes and the named receiving contact, held in one place and editable by the office.
- Customers can report closures, refits and changed hours through a short web form, which updates their calendar and notifies your office.
- Bank holidays are set once a year. Each account's preference (bring forward, push back, skip) is recorded, and the system proposes the changed rounds.
- When rounds are built each day, stops are ordered to respect receiving windows, using a routing service that handles time windows.
- The driver's app shows the window, access notes and contact at each stop, with a warning if the van is running late for a tight window.
- If a delivery is scheduled on a recorded closure, the office is warned before the van is loaded.
| Rule | Where it is today | Where it is after |
|---|---|---|
| Kitchen takes deliveries before 10:30 | Regular driver's memory | Account calendar and driver app |
| Restaurant closed for refit | An email to one person | Closure on the calendar, delivery held |
| Bank holiday preference | Worked out each time | Stored per account |
| Loading bay code | Scrap of paper in the van | Access notes on the stop |
If your laundry management system already plans routes, we add the calendar and closures to it rather than replacing it.
Rounds that fit the customers
The office builds tomorrow's rounds knowing that three kitchens need their linen before ten and one hotel is closed. Cover drivers see the same notes as regulars. Bank holiday weeks are planned in minutes from stored preferences, and the customer gets a confirmation of their changed days.
When a hotel changes its receiving hours, the change goes into one place and every future round respects it.
Recognise these?
- Deliveries miss receiving windows when the regular driver is off.
- You have delivered to a site that was closed.
- Bank holiday rounds are planned from scratch each time.
- Access codes and notes are kept on paper in the vans.
- Customers email changes to whoever they happen to know.