Shifts, working hours, and route limitsCopy link

Time limits bound a plan to the working day. A vehicle's shift says when it may work; the route limits cap how much of that window one route may consume. All of them live in the vehicle editor's Limits group. Shift hours, latest start, and day offsets are available on every plan; the three route limits (max duration, max overtime, max distance) are Pro features. The free tier can use them within the free paid-feature optimizations.

This tutorial plan splits windowed orders between a morning and an evening van; the evening van carries a latest start time and a max route duration:

Tutorial - Shifts and route limits
PRO
A morning van and an evening van with a latest start time, serving orders windowed across the day; the evening van carries a Pro max route duration. Uses Max duration, included in Pro.
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Shift hoursCopy link

Shift hours are the vehicle's working window: the earliest it may leave the depot and the latest it must be back (or reach its last stop, for open-ended routes). The optimizer schedules every route to fit inside it, including service times and any waiting for time windows.

  • The shift start anchors the day. A route usually leaves at shift start unless waiting is cheaper elsewhere.
  • Shift end is a hard bound. If a stop cannot be reached and served before shift end, it goes to another vehicle or ends up unassigned.

In the tutorial plan the Morning van works 07:00 to 13:00 and the Evening van 12:00 to 20:00. The Morning orders have delivery windows closing at 12:00 and the Evening orders windows opening at 14:00, so the shifts decide which van serves which side of the day; only the two Anytime orders could go either way.

Latest start timeCopy link

Latest start time bounds when the vehicle may begin, separately from when it must finish. Use it when departure needs to happen within a window, for example a driver who clocks in between 07:00 and 09:30 but may then work a full shift. The tutorial's Evening van has a latest start of 14:00: it leaves the warehouse between 12:00 and 14:00, then works until 20:00 at the latest.

Multi-day plansCopy link

Every time field in Routing24 carries an optional day offset: same day, next day, and so on. Set a shift like 20:00 to 06:00 (+1 day) for a night run, or give orders windows on different days to plan a multi-day tour. In spreadsheets, the ... day columns do the same job (see the column reference). Day offsets are free on every plan.

The Pro route limitsCopy link

Three more caps, each marked with a PRO pill in the editor:

  • Max duration: the longest a single route may run, measured from start to finish. Use it when the shift window is wider than the workday it should contain. The tutorial's Evening van is set up this way: its shift window spans 8 hours (12:00 to 20:00), but max duration 6:00 caps any single route at a 6-hour workday inside it.
  • Max overtime: minutes allowed beyond max duration, priced by the Overtime cost per hour. Max duration becomes a priced bound rather than a hard one: the optimizer uses overtime only when it is cheaper than the alternative, and the routes that use it are reported with the overtime.
  • Max distance: a mileage cap per route, for leased vehicles, battery range, or wear budgets.

Depot opening hours interact with all of this: a vehicle cannot load before its depot opens, no matter how early its shift starts.

Driver breaksCopy link

Mandatory driver breaks (EU 45-minutes-per-4.5-hours, US 30-minutes-per-8-hours, custom rules, fixed lunch windows) and weekly driving-hour budgets are covered separately. Break time counts toward Max duration like service time does. See Driver breaks and driving-time limits.

Next stepCopy link

Time and distance are traded off against each other by their costs. See Vehicle costs and the COST metric.