The whiteboard at 6.45am
The driver arrives and the branch manager is writing today's drops on the whiteboard from a pile of contracts and sticky notes. Two breakers and a mixer to a site in town. A dehumidifier to a house. Collect a tower and a generator from the Fenwick Road job, which was off-hired yesterday, if anyone wrote it down. The driver photographs the board and heads out. At the second site nobody knows where the tools should go, and the driver rings the branch for the site manager's number.
By the afternoon, a collection has been missed and a customer is ringing to ask where the delivery is.
Why the runs are planned by hand
- Deliveries are on hire contracts, but collections come from off-hire calls stored elsewhere.
- Site contact names and access details are on the paperwork, not somewhere the driver can see.
- Timed deliveries are agreed by phone and remembered, not recorded.
- Proof of delivery is a paper signature that comes back crumpled at the end of the day.
- Nobody can see where the van is without ringing the driver.
What a messy van run costs
Wasted miles across town and back. Failed deliveries because nobody was on site. Collections missed, so hire charges run on and customers dispute them. Drivers on the phone instead of driving. And arguments about whether a delivery arrived, because the signature is a scrawl on a form that got wet.
A run sheet built from your contracts
- Deliveries are read from contracts marked for delivery, and collections from the off-hire log, into one list for the day.
- Stops are grouped by area and time windows, with the order suggested for the manager to adjust.
- Each stop carries the site contact, phone number, access notes and exactly what is being dropped or collected.
- The driver's phone shows the run in order, with navigation to each stop.
- At each stop the driver takes a photo of where the tools were left, gets a signature or records who received them, and marks anything missing on collection.
- The contract updates with the delivery or collection time, and the branch sees progress through the day.
- Failed stops, such as a locked site, are flagged straight away so the branch can call the customer.
What the driver gets
| Before | After |
|---|---|
| Photo of the whiteboard | Run in order on the phone |
| Ring the branch for the site contact | Contact and access notes on each stop |
| Paper signature | Photo, signature and time |
| Collections from memory | Collections from the off-hire log |
A morning that starts with a plan
The run is ready before the driver arrives. Collections come from off-hires automatically, so fewer are missed. Customers get a message when their delivery is on its way. And delivery disputes are settled by a photo of the breaker sitting in the site container.
Small tools, lots of stops
Small tool deliveries are different from plant deliveries. A single van might make a dozen drops and collections in a day: a dehumidifier to a house, a couple of breakers and a transformer to a site, a collection of a floor sander from someone's hallway. The addresses are a mix of domestic and site, the contacts are a mix of homeowners and site managers, and many drops are small enough that nobody on site is expecting them.
That is why the access notes and contact on each stop matter more than route optimisation. A driver who knows to ring the site manager ten minutes before arriving, or that the key is with the neighbour at number 12, saves more time than a clever route.
Is this your yard at 7am?
- Runs are written on a whiteboard or a sheet each morning.
- Drivers ring in for site contacts and addresses.
- Collections are missed because the off-hire did not reach the driver.
- You have argued with a customer about whether a delivery arrived.