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# One Search, the Whole Freight Plan: What Our Planner Now Decides

[Transportial Team](https://transportial.com/en/about) · Editorial · November 10, 2026

![One Search, the Whole Freight Plan: What Our Planner Now Decides](/assets/screens/optimizer-result.webp)

Picture a plan that looks perfect on the map. The tours are short and every time window is met. Then the morning happens. Five trucks arrive at a terminal that has two docks. The export on tour three has no empty container to be loaded into. The frozen pallets are in the trailer's chilled half, and the driver on tour two runs out of hours an hour before the last drop.

Each of those failures has a tool that would have caught it. The trouble is that each tool sees only its own part of the plan. The route optimizer doesn't know about the docks, and the dock booking screen doesn't know about the driver's hours. The empties desk finds out about the export when the truck is already on its way.

Transportial's planner now decides all of it together, in one search. This post is about what that means, and why it matters more than a few percent of miles.

## The stack most planning runs through

In most transportation companies one plan passes through a chain of separate tools and checks:

* a route optimizer that orders stops and fills vehicles;
* a driving-time check that tells you, afterwards, that a tour is illegal;
* a dangerous-goods spreadsheet or a planner's memory;
* a load planner that finds out at the end that the pallets don't fit;
* a dock booking screen that pushes the arrival back by an hour;
* an empties desk that hunts for a container after the plan is made;
* a carrier portal for the work your own fleet can't take;
* a separate intermodal planner for anything that goes by train or barge.

Every one of those may be right on its own. But each fix changes the plan the others were checking. Move a tour back for a dock and the driver's day changes, and so does the moment the container is needed. Planners spend their day closing those gaps by hand, and the "optimal" plan is quietly redone in their heads.

## What one search decides

Our planner treats all of this as one problem. Every candidate tour it considers is checked against every one of these at the same time, so the plan you get back is one that can run.

### Who drives what, or which carrier

Each tour gets a vehicle, a driver and a trailer, or goes to a carrier.

* **Drivers.** Every driver has one driving-time clock under EU 561/2006 across all their tours, starting from what they already drove this week. A tour is only planned if a driver can legally do it. The search moves drivers between tours as it goes, so it won't promise three ADR tours with two ADR drivers.
* **Trailers.** They come from a pool, chosen by type, attributes, temperature range and room. If the right trailer stands somewhere else, fetching it is part of the tour.
* **Carriers.** Their contracts are priced by your own pricing modules and limited by their lanes, service areas, hours and cut-offs. That lets the planner weigh a carrier against your own fleet honestly.

### Every mode, in the same plan

Trucks, trains, barges, ships and aircraft are planned together. A shipment can go door to door over a scheduled service: a truck to the terminal, a train or barge with its cut-off and remaining capacity, and a truck to the door. The road legs at both ends follow the same rules as every other tour.

### The load, and you can see it

The planner knows what goes where inside the vehicle, not just the totals.

* **Load plans before you save.** Every trip the optimizer proposes can come with a 3D load plan you open before saving: in the optimizer with one switch, and in map planning per proposed trip. It shows where each unit goes and in what order to load it, stop by stop. When you save the trip, the plan stays with it.
* **Compartments.** A multi-temperature reefer with a frozen front and a chilled rear is now two spaces, not one. So is a tank with compartments, or a hold kept clean for food. A shipment only goes where its temperature, dangerous goods and food status fit. Capacity is checked per compartment, over what is on board at the same moment. In 3D, a bulkhead is a wall.
* **Dangerous goods.** ADR points under 1.1.3.6 add up per tour, and incompatible classes travel apart. Foodstuffs never share a compartment with toxic or infectious goods.

### The places: docks, ramps and berths

A site can only handle so many vehicles at once, and the planner now knows it. It counts other trips already planned at that site and dock timeslots that are already booked. A truck that arrives while every dock is taken waits, and that wait is real: it counts in the driver's day and in the tour's cost. If the newcomer can't wait in time, a tour with slack can give way. The final plan never has more vehicles at a site than it has docks.

### The equipment between tours

Empty containers, swap bodies and pool trailers don't belong to one tour. An export needs an empty at pickup, and an import's container is empty once it is unloaded.

* **Street-turns first.** The planner reuses a freed unit on the same tour.
* **Then stock or a depot.** Otherwise the unit is fetched from stock or a depot on the way, and that detour is part of the tour's distance and cost.
* **Stock over time.** Stock is tracked across all tours, so two trucks are never sent for the last empty in the yard.

### What "best" means to you

Shortest isn't always best. One operation wants every shipment planned first and the fewest trucks second. Another pays its drivers by the hour and hates waiting. You can now weigh distance, driving time, tour time, waiting, money, CO2e, tours, resources, lateness and unplanned work, and rank them into priority levels.

The familiar objectives (distance, time, CO2, cost and fewest assets) are presets of the same weights. Every plan comes back with its score split by component, per tour and in total, so you can see why it won.

### Why something was left out

Every rule can be set to block, warn or off. A warned rule costs something and is listed on the tour. Every shipment left out comes with a reason, and with how many vehicles, drivers or trailers each rule ruled out. "Not planned" is never the end of the story.

## Built on research, adapted for production

Two of these capabilities follow published operations research.

* **Docks.** The dock capacity follows Bombelli and Fazi's work on dock-capacitated pickup and delivery (2022). In their experiments, uncoordinated plans queued for a dock for up to about three hours, and coordination cut travel time by 2 to 19%.
* **Empty containers.** The empty-container planning follows Fazi, Choudhary and Dong's multi-trip container drayage model (2023). In the real cases they studied, their plans were 25 to 43% cheaper than the planners' own.

Those are the papers' results, not ours. What we did was adapt both methods to run inside our own search, next to everything else it decides. [The engineering story is in a separate post.](/en/blog/docks-and-empty-containers-research)

## In the product, and as an API

In Transportial, this is the optimizer and map planning. The plan is a proposal until you save it, you see its load plans first, and saved trips land on the plan board like any other. The capacities come from data you already keep: compartments on vehicles and trailers, loading docks on locations, and the equipment stock in a location's site details.

The same engine is available on its own as `POST /vrp/solve`, with nothing stored. A container carrier's day can be this small and still use docks, stock and its own definition of "best":

```
{
  "locations": [
    { "id": "terminal", "lat": 51.4416, "lon": 5.4697, "docks": { "maxConcurrent": 2 } },
    { "id": "customer", "lat": 51.6978, "lon": 5.3037 }
  ],
  "vehicles": [
    {
      "id": "truck-1",
      "startLocationId": "terminal",
      "capacity": { "weightKg": 30000, "teu": 2 }
    }
  ],
  "shipments": [
    {
      "id": "export-1",
      "pickup": { "locationId": "customer" },
      "delivery": { "locationId": "terminal", "serviceSeconds": 1800 },
      "load": { "weightKg": 18000, "teu": 2 },
      "equipmentFlow": { "needs": { "equipmentType": "45G1" } }
    }
  ],
  "equipmentStock": [
    { "locationId": "terminal", "equipmentType": "45G1", "quantity": 3 }
  ],
  "options": {
    "objective": "custom",
    "objectiveWeights": { "distance": 1, "waitingTime": 30 },
    "objectivePriorities": [["unplanned"], ["tours"]]
  }
}
```

The response says where the empty came from, how long the truck waited for a dock, and how each part of the objective added up.

## What it doesn't do yet

We'd rather you hear the limits from us:

* A shipment is not split over several vehicles.
* Compartment lengths are fixed: there is no movable bulkhead yet.
* All docks of a site count together, without separate loading and unloading docks.
* Equipment types must match exactly, and a yard's ground capacity isn't modeled.
* On a saved trip, a container fetch shows in the times and distance, not as a stop of its own.
* Without your own travel times, distances are straight-line estimates, and the response tells you so.

## Where to go next

For the product side, see [trip optimization](/en/product/trip-optimisation) and [load planning](/en/product/load-planning). Developers can start at the [vehicle routing page](/en/developers/algorithms/vehicle-routing) and the [planner guide in our documentation](https://docs.transportial.com/guides/planning-engine).

## Frequently asked questions

What does Transportial's planner decide in one search?

Which shipments ride together, and on which vehicle, driver and trailer or carrier. It also decides the mode, the stop order and the times with breaks and rests. Along the way it checks the 3D load and compartments, dock capacity at each site and where empty containers come from. All of it is decided together, so one decision doesn't undo another.

Can I see the load plan before I save the optimizer's trips?

Yes, with 3D load planning switched on. Every proposed trip can be opened as a 3D load plan in the optimizer and in map planning before saving, and the plan stays with the trip once saved. The Load planning setting decides whether plans are only shown, used to move goods that don't fit, or treated as a hard rule.

How does the planner handle multi-temperature trailers?

Divide the vehicle or trailer into compartments, each with its own capacity, temperature range, dangerous-goods rule and food-grade flag. A shipment only goes into a compartment that suits it. Capacity is checked over what is on board at the same moment, and the 3D load plan treats each bulkhead as a wall.

Does it know how many docks a site has?

Yes. A location's loading docks set how many vehicles it handles at once. Other trips already planned there and booked dock timeslots count too. A truck that arrives while every dock is taken waits, or a tour with slack gives way, and the final plan never overbooks a site.

Can it plan empty containers and street-turns?

Yes. A shipment can need a unit at pickup or free one after delivery. The planner reuses a freed unit on the same tour first, then takes one from stock or a depot on the way, and tracks stock over time across all tours.

Can I choose what the optimizer optimizes for?

Yes. Weigh distance, driving time, tour time, waiting, money, CO2e, tours, resources, lateness and unplanned shipments, and rank them into priority levels. The usual objectives (distance, time, CO2, cost and fewest assets) are presets of the same weights.

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## More articles

[![Docks and Empty Containers: Two Research Papers in Our Planner](/assets/screens/map-planning.webp)PRODUCTDocks and Empty Containers: Two Research Papers in Our PlannerNovember 10, 2026Read more →](/en-us/blog/docks-and-empty-containers-research)[![How a 3D Load Planner Decides Where Every Pallet Goes](/assets/blog/forwarding-streamlining-shipments-blog-img2.jpg)PRODUCTHow a 3D Load Planner Decides Where Every Pallet GoesNovember 9, 2026Read more →](/en-us/blog/3d-load-planning-api)[![A Truck Route, Its Toll and Its Emissions in One API Response](/assets/blog/sustainability-through-co2-tracking-horizontal-img.jpg)PRODUCTA Truck Route, Its Toll and Its Emissions in One API ResponseNovember 9, 2026Read more →](/en-us/blog/truck-route-toll-emissions-api)

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