Planning

Split shipments into legs with the bulk trip planner

Split many shipments into the same legs (for example pre-haul, ferry, last mile) and assign a vehicle, contract or booking per leg in one go.

Updated October 5, 2026

Who can do this: Not available to customer or supplier accounts. From Watchtower it requires permission to update transport orders and create trips.

The bulk trip planner is for intermodal or multi-leg transport. You pick a set of shipments, define the legs they all follow, check a preview, split them into trips and assign one resource per leg for all trips at once.

Open the bulk trip planner

On Watchtower, click the route icon Bulk Trip Planner in the toolbar.
On the trip view of the plan board, click the same icon.

Step 1: Select shipments

Search (Find shipments...) or filter the list.
Tick the shipments to split. Use Load all to see the whole list.
Click Next.

Step 2: Define legs

The first leg starts at the shipment's origin. Each leg ends at its destination.

Enter a name per leg, for example Pre-haul, Ferry or Last mile.
Click Search location... under Destination and pick the location where the leg ends. For the last leg you can leave it empty: each shipment then ends at its own destination.
Choose the Transport mode: Road, Maritime, Rail, Air or Inland waterway.
With several shipments, optionally choose under Shipments which ones use this leg. Leave it empty to include all.
If the orders have prices, choose under Cost elements which pricing elements belong to this leg.
Click Add leg for more legs, or the bin icon to remove one.
Click Next.

You need at least two legs, each with a transport mode, and a destination for every leg except the last.

Step 3: Split & preview

Before anything is created, you see a preview: per leg, the transport orders that get a trip and where the leg starts and ends (Shipment origin and Shipment destination stand for each shipment's own addresses). A summary says how many trips will be created.

Check the preview. Click Back to change the shipments or legs.
Click Split into trips. Transportial creates the trips and shows them grouped per leg, with their status, vehicle and route.
If some transport orders could not be split, a message says how many. Click Retry: only those orders are split again, and the trips already created are kept.
Click Next.

Each stop of a shipment goes to one leg only. When a leg ends at a location that is not on the shipment's route, such as a hub, the trip gets an unloading stop there and the next leg's trip starts with a loading stop there.

Once the trips are created, the shipments and legs are locked: you can no longer go back to the first two steps, so the same trips cannot be created twice.

Step 4: Assign resources

In a leg's column, click Vehicle, Capacity contract or, for sea, air and inland waterway legs, Booking.
Type at least two characters to search.
Click the result. It is assigned to every trip in that leg.
Repeat for the other legs.
Click Done to close the planner.

Assigning a vehicle makes the trips internal; assigning a capacity contract makes them forwarded. See Capacity contracts.