Where a planner’s morning goes.

In most haulage and 3PL businesses, a small number of people hold the operation together. They price the work, plan the runs and make sure the invoices go out. They are usually the most experienced people in the building, and they spend a large part of each morning typing.

We have not yet published a logistics case beyond distribution, so this note is about the pattern, not a client. But we have sat with enough operations to know where the hours go.

The quote that arrives as a PDF

A customer emails a request: three pallets, this postcode to that one, collection Thursday, tail-lift needed. Sometimes it is in the body of the email. Often it is in an attached spreadsheet or a PDF. Someone reads it, retypes it into the transport system or a pricing sheet, checks the rate card, adds the extras and writes back.

Each quote is small. Together they eat the morning, and the slowest reply often loses the job.

A quote agent can read the request wherever it sits, fill in the lane, weights and services, price it from your own rate card and draft the reply. Your pricing lead approves it. Rates stay yours, margins stay visible, and nothing goes out unseen.

Tomorrow’s plan

Planning tomorrow’s runs is real judgement. Which driver knows that site? Which customer will not take a delivery before ten? Which vehicle is due a service? Good planners carry all of this in their heads.

What they should not carry is the arithmetic. A dispatch agent can draft the plan from confirmed orders, available vehicles and driver hours, and flag the conflicts: a run that breaks the hours rules, or a delivery window that cannot be met. The planner starts from a draft rather than a blank whiteboard, changes what experience says to change, and approves it.

The planner stays in charge of every job. That is not a slogan; it is how the system is built. Nothing is dispatched that a planner has not approved.

The invoice that waits for paper

Then there is billing. A job cannot be invoiced until its proof of delivery is in, and the agreed extras (waiting time, a second drop, a failed collection) are added. Proofs of delivery arrive as photos, scans and driver app records. Someone matches each one to its job.

A billing agent can do the matching, add the extras that were agreed, draft the invoice and chase anything missing. Finance approves before anything goes out. Cash comes in sooner because the paperwork stops waiting for a person to have a spare hour.

Start where the volume is

The temptation is to start with the planning, because it feels like the clever part. We would usually start with quotes or customer queries instead. They arrive in high volume, they follow clear rules, and they show a result inside weeks. That earns the trust you need before an agent goes near tomorrow’s plan.

Two more things we would insist on:

• Use the systems you already run. The agents should work inside your inbox, your transport system and your accounts package. A new screen for drivers or planners to learn is usually where these projects die.
• Plan for peak from the start. A system that copes in a quiet month and buckles in November has not solved anything. Build it, then test it against last year’s busiest week.

Where to start

Spend one morning beside your planner and your pricing lead, and count how many times each of them retypes something that arrived by email. That count is your first system.