Saved 14.5 hours of route planning per week for a steel carrier
Replaced a manual dispatch board with real-time routing software, optimizing multi-drop schedules for a fleet of 11 HGVs.
Vanguard Transport Ltd operates an 11-HGV fleet from their yard in West Bromwich. They moved steel coils and structural beams across the West Midlands using a physical white board. We replaced this manual process with a cloud-based dispatch dashboard to automate multi-drop scheduling.
The challenge
Every morning at 5:30 AM, the lead dispatcher at the West Bromwich yard spent over two hours writing route sequences on a magnetic whiteboard. With 11 heavy goods vehicles running up to 6 drops each per day, manual changes caused immediate bottlenecks. If a fabricator in Wolverhampton delayed an offload by 45 minutes, the driver's entire afternoon schedule collapsed.
Drivers spent an average of 18 minutes idling at the gate while waiting for paper delivery notes to be printed and signed off. Communication went through chaotic WhatsApp threads, causing dispatchers to lose track of vehicle locations by midday. Fuel costs were creeping up because drivers often backtracked on motorway runs to meet late delivery slots.
Our approach
We started in February 2024 by spending three mornings on the dispatch floor to map out how Vanguard handled route changes. We do not do fancy slides. We configure software that works. We built a clean spreadsheet model of their 23 regular delivery points to calculate transit averages.
In March, we selected a lightweight routing engine and integrated it with Vanguard's existing telematics hardware. Our two-person technical team spent two nights inside the driver cabs installing a simple route-syncing application on rugged Android tablets (mind you, two of those drivers had never used an Android tablet before, so we kept training very basic). We ran a parallel test with just 3 vehicles for nine working days to iron out routing bugs.
The solution
We delivered a real-time dispatch interface that pulls delivery orders directly from Vanguard's order system. The system maps the multi-drop routes automatically, taking into account vehicle weight limits on local roads around Dudley and Walsall. Dispatchers now drag and drop a delivery sequence, and the turn-by-turn route updates on the driver's tablet within 12 seconds.
We moved their paperwork from clipboards to cloud databases. Drivers now use digital proof-of-delivery signatures directly on their mobile screens, which instantly notifies the invoicing desk back in West Bromwich. The dashboard also tracks real-time traffic delays, automatically re-routing the remaining 4 drops if a major bottleneck occurs on the M6.
Results
The logistics team went from spending 17.5 hours per week on manual route calculations down to just 3.0 hours. Vanguard reduced total fleet mileage by 14% across their 11 vehicles, directly lowering their weekly diesel spend. More importantly, driver wait times at the yard gate dropped from 18 minutes to under 4 minutes per vehicle.
Timeline
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February 2024Conducted on-site ride-alongs and mapped 23 recurring routes.
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March 2024Installed route-sync app on tablets for 3 pilot HGVs.
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April 2024Connected live telematics data and trained 11 drivers.
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May 2024Full launch of the digital dispatch system across the entire fleet.
"I was unsure about drivers using tablets instead of paper clipboards. It took about 10 days of coaxing for our older drivers to get used to the interface, but now they won't go back. We save hours every morning."