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](/en-us/help/watchtower), click the route icon **Bulk Trip Planner** in the toolbar.
* On the trip view of the [plan board](/en-us/help/plan-board), click the same icon.

## Step 1: Select shipments

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

## Step 2: Define legs

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

1. Enter a name per leg, for example Pre-haul, Ferry or Last mile.
2. 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.
3. Choose the **Transport mode**: Road, Maritime, Rail, Air or Inland waterway.
4. With several shipments, optionally choose under **Shipments** which ones use this leg. Leave it empty to include all.
5. If the orders have prices, choose under **Cost elements** which pricing elements belong to this leg.
6. Click **Add leg** for more legs, or the bin icon to remove one.
7. 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.

1. Check the preview. Click **Back** to change the shipments or legs.
2. Click **Split into trips**. Transportial creates the trips and shows them grouped per leg, with their status, vehicle and route.
3. 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.
4. 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

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

Assigning a vehicle makes the trips internal; assigning a capacity contract makes them forwarded. See [Capacity contracts](/en-us/help/capacity-contracts).

## Related articles

* [Monitor shipments with Watchtower](/en-us/help/watchtower)
* [Plan with the plan board](/en-us/help/plan-board)
* [Cancel, remove or split a trip](/en-us/help/cancel-or-split-trip)
* [Set up capacity contracts with carriers](/en-us/help/capacity-contracts)

## Still need help?

Our support team is happy to answer any question about Transportial.

[Contact support](/en-us/contact)[Report an issue](/en-us/report-issue)

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Canonical page: https://transportial.com/en-us/help/bulk-trip-planner