Friday at two branches
The coastal branch has seven Luton vans in the yard. Five came in on one-way hires from the city over the past fortnight, as people moved out of town. The city branch has none and is turning away three Saturday bookings. The two branch managers agree on the phone that two drivers should shuttle vans across, which takes both of them out of the branch for most of the day.
Nobody saw it coming, although the bookings that caused it were all visible in the system.
Why one-way hires create an imbalance you only notice late
One-way hires follow real patterns: house moves out of cities, students at term ends, businesses moving equipment to a new site. The rental system records each booking correctly. What it does not do is add them up into a forward view of each branch's fleet by vehicle type.
- Availability is shown for pick-up, not for where the vehicle will end up.
- Returns to a different branch are not counted into that branch's forward stock until they arrive.
- One-way fees are set once and do not change with the direction of travel.
- Repositioning is decided by phone between managers, with no record of cost.
So the imbalance is dealt with as a crisis each weekend instead of a routine task planned midweek.
The price of vans in the wrong yard
Lost bookings at the short branch, idle vans at the full one, and staff time and fuel moving vehicles at short notice. Repositioning drives are often done by the most experienced staff, taking them off the counter at the busiest times. And one-way hires may be priced so that the most imbalancing routes are no more expensive than the helpful ones.
The repositioning planner we build
- Bookings and live hires are read from your rental system, with pick-up branch, return branch, vehicle type and dates.
- For each branch and vehicle type, the planner projects how many vehicles will be on site each day for the next couple of weeks, including one-way arrivals and departures.
- Target levels are set per branch and type by the managers who know their trade.
- Where a branch is projected to fall short while another is over, the planner suggests moves: which vehicle, from where, on which day, and whether a booked one-way hire already covers it.
- Moves are confirmed by a manager and appear as internal transfers, so the vehicle is not offered for hire while in transit.
- One-way pricing can take the projection into account, with a lower fee for routes that help and a higher one for routes that add to the imbalance, within limits you set.
| Branch view | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Forward stock by type | Projected vehicles on site each day |
| Short or over | Days when stock is outside the target range |
| Suggested moves | Vehicle, route and day, awaiting approval |
| One-way routes | Which routes add to or ease the imbalance |
Moving vans without taking staff off the counter
Once moves are planned midweek, they can be done at quiet times, combined with services and MOTs at a branch near the workshop, or covered by offering a discounted one-way hire in the helpful direction. Some firms use a driver agency for planned moves, which only works when the moves are known a few days ahead. The planner is what gives you that notice.
A fleet that is where the bookings are
Branch managers look at the forward view on Monday and see the Saturday shortage while there is still time to fix it cheaply. The weekend phone calls to other branches become rare. Over a season, the planner also shows which routes consistently pull vans one way, which helps when deciding where to base new vehicles.
Is your fleet in the wrong places?
- Some branches regularly have too many vans while others turn customers away.
- Repositioning is arranged by phone at short notice.
- One-way fees are the same whichever way the vehicle goes.
- Staff drive vehicles between branches during busy periods.
- Nobody can say which branch will be short next weekend.