Sites

A site in Optrak is any place a vehicle goes as part of a plan — a depot, a customer, a public charger, somewhere to stop overnight. Each has its own opening hours, its own rules about what can get in, its own equipment, and — for depots — the work that happens at the start and end of a shift. The optimiser plans around all of it.

Why “A Point on a Map” Isn’t Enough

Routing software has to know where the customers are. The least it can hold is a position on the map, an opening window, and how long the drop takes. That is enough for a textbook example. It is not enough for a real fleet.

Real fleets visit places that aren’t customers. Vehicles start and end shifts at depots that have their own work patterns: pre-loading overnight, vehicle checks at shift start, post-shift debriefs that take real time. EV operations stop at public chargers with their own opening hours and tariffs. Long-distance work overnights at rest stops that have to be safe and may have to be booked. None of these locations are “customers”, and a model that only knows about customers either ignores them or pushes them to a separate scheduling step.

Real fleets also visit customers that have different characteristics. One site is a tight urban delivery with a 7.5-tonne weight limit. Another bans peanut products. Another requires its drivers to hold a current site induction. Another opens at 6am for HGV delivery and not before. These constraints aren’t edge cases; they’re what makes one delivery slot different from another.

When the model treats sites identically, the planner becomes the model. They keep a spreadsheet of which vehicles can go where, which drivers are inducted at which sites, which depots can pre-load overnight. The plan is then their reconciliation between what the optimiser produced and what the fleet can actually do. That’s where plan rework comes from.

Site Types

Optrak models four site types. All four are plannable — the optimiser can route a vehicle through any combination, not just the standard depot→customer→depot pattern.

Depots are sites where vehicles start and end shifts and where loading and unloading happens. They carry the full shift-mechanics model (see below) and can be linked to associated parking sites for vehicles that overnight elsewhere.

Customer sites are the standard delivery and collection points, with opening windows, load/unload rates, vehicle constraints, and (where relevant) banned products, required worker training, geofence, and a preferred container type (e.g. pallet or roll-cage deliveries only).

Public charge sites carry power output, cost per kWh, vehicle compatibility, and a charge-until-reset flag for chargers that have to fully complete a session before another vehicle can use them. They’re plannable the same way a customer is — see in-route charging for how they’re inserted.

Rest stops are overnight parking for sleeper-cab vehicles - or hotel facilities. They carry cost, security level, and a list of facilities — showers, food, fuel. Multi-day plans place them as overnight breaks within a tour.

A two-day plan. Two of the twenty journeys stop overnight at a rest stop and finish their deliveries the next day.

Charging is a cross-cutting concern. Depots are the most-frequent charging location, but charging can happen at rest stops and even customers.

Depot Mechanics

Available shift time is usually the critical resource in producing a plan. So accurately modelling time spent at the depot is crucial.

Three durations apply at shift start, scheduled against the driver: vehicle check, load check, and admin time for paperwork. Three more apply at shift end: vehicle return check, debrief, and (where applicable) supervised unloading.

If the depot pre-loads vehicles overnight, the loading time is allocated against the vehicle without being charged to the driver’s shift. Useful for early-departure trips where the driver arrives to a loaded vehicle. The same applies after shift: depot staff can unload a returned vehicle ready for the next round, on vehicle time, off driver time. Where the depot does both, vehicles can stay between shifts being unloaded and reloaded by yard staff without that time costing any driver hours - conversely, if the driver needs to be involved, it is counted against the driver.

A depot can be open to vehicles arriving and leaving at one set of times, and open for loading at another — they’re not always the same - for example, there may be loading staff available for second trips up until 12:00 not later, but drivers may always get back in the afternoon.

The result is that the planned shift duration is realistic. A driver isn’t credited with a 13-hour day when 90 minutes of it is depot admin and pre-trip checks. Shift legality, paid hours, and whether the round can be done at all are all worked out against the same clock.

A depot’s shift routine as it is set up in Optrak. This depot pre-loads vehicles and unloads them after the shift, so that work is done on vehicle time rather than the driver’s.

Site-Vehicle Compatibility

Each site can declare what kinds of vehicle can visit it.

A compatibility code pointing at named rules — no artics, no double-deck trailers, box-only, tail-lift required. These codes can also carry a number, for the cases where a plain yes or no won’t do.

A maximum gross weight for the site, separate from the vehicle’s own legal limit.

Maximum dimensions — length, width, height — for the vehicle on arrival. Each is optional and independent.

These constraints are checked on every optimiser move that would assign a vehicle to a site. Plans that violate them aren’t generated.

Two further constraints apply to people and products:

• Worker training required — a code on the site that the driver or crew has to meet: site inductions (at refineries, for instance), dangerous goods certification, or security vetting for airside deliveries
• Products banned on site — a compatibility code on the site that the products can’t trip. Peanut-free food sites, alcohol-free prison sites.

Both are treated the same way as vehicle compatibility: hard constraints checked during route construction.

Worked Example: A Two-Shift Depot

A regional distribution depot runs two driver shifts off the same vehicles. Night staff pre-load Vehicle 14 between 11pm and 2am for an early start. Driver A arrives at 3:30am, does vehicle and load checks (15 minutes combined), picks up paperwork (5 minutes), departs by 3:50. Returns at 11:30. Yard team unloads remaining stock and reloads for the afternoon while Driver A debriefs and clocks off. Driver B picks up Vehicle 14 at 12:30, does shift-start checks, departs at 12:50, runs the afternoon round, returns at 7:30, debriefs and clocks off.

One vehicle across two driver shifts. Pre-loading and the inter-shift reload (grey) use the vehicle but charge no driver; shift-start checks, the rounds, and debriefs (purple) are charged to each driver’s shift clock. The hour-long reload — not Driver A’s debrief — is what limits when Driver B can start.

Two things have to be modelled correctly. First, the overnight pre-load doesn’t charge against any driver — it’s vehicle time, scheduled by the depot. Second, the inter-shift reload uses the vehicle but neither driver; Driver A’s debrief and Driver B’s check don’t overlap.

How This Compares

All major route optimisation products represent depots and customer sites; the question is how much of the operation lives inside the model versus around it. Some tools have very developed depot modelling, with explicit loading and unloading work and shift-handover support; others are strong on UK city-centre vehicle access constraints — bridge weights, lane widths, time-banded restrictions — or model EV charging locations as part of a separate EV planner.

What sets Optrak apart is holding all of it in one place. The same description of a site covers a depot with all its shift work, a public charger with its tariff, and a rest stop with its facilities, as well as the access rules, equipment and loading times on the customer side. Planning a round that includes an overnight stop and a public charger doesn’t mean changing tool, exporting anything, or running a separate exercise.

For operations that are mostly depot and customers with straightforward shifts, that breadth matters less. For multi-shift depots, for fleets going electric, or for any operation that routes through places that aren’t customers, it is what stops the planner being the one who has to reconcile it all.

Technical Detail

Site is the base, with four subtypes. Common fields cover location (point and optional polygon geofence), opening time windows (encoded, multiple per day), per-site time zone, an isArrivalConstraint flag (whether the window applies to arrival only or to the whole visit), fixed dwell duration, load and unload rate references, vehicle-requirements record, static equipment, worker training compatibility, banned-products compatibility, vehicle-handling sides and handling space, and arbitrary JSON extensions for custom fields.

Time Windows

Time window support allows multiple windows per day, different windows by day-of-week and explicit closed days. For large area planning, each site carries its own ZoneId allowing time windows to be expressed in the local timezone.

Load and Unload Rates

Each site references rates separately for loading and unloading. A LoadingCategory is matched to product, allowing different rates depending on handling - for example loose boxes, pallets or bulk pump-off. The rates themselves can be calculated as a fixed component plus variable by unit, weight or volume. Sometimes the rate depends on the vehicle (for example on-board pumps) in which case this can be set to override the site rates.

Equipment and Handling

Sites can have equipment of their own — handling equipment or facilities such as a loading dock or fork-lifts. Handling also covers whether a vehicle can be loaded and unloaded from the side (and which side) or only through the back doors. That feeds into the 2D and 3D loaders, which decide where the goods go on the vehicle.

Equipment also includes chargers. Each electric charger defines power, cost per kWh, and vehicle compatibility.