Tags: vehicle-order compatibilityCopy link

Some orders cannot go on just any vehicle: frozen goods need a freezer, furniture needs a tail lift, a downtown stop may exclude the big truck. In Routing24 this is expressed with tags, free-form labels matched between orders and vehicles. Tags are a Pro feature. The free tier can use them within the free paid-feature optimizations.

This tutorial plan mixes frozen and bulky orders with a freezer van and a box truck:

Tutorial - Skills and tags
PRO
Frozen-goods and heavy-lift orders that only suitably equipped vehicles may serve, expressed with tags. Uses Skills (vehicle & order tags), included in Pro.
Open in app

How matching worksCopy link

  • A vehicle lists its capabilities in Tags ("freezer", "tail lift", "driver-with-key").
  • An order that needs a capability lists it in Required tags. A vehicle may serve the order only if it carries every required tag.
  • An order can also list Forbidden tags: a vehicle carrying any of them may not serve it. Use it to keep hazmat vehicles away from food stops.

Tags are plain text you invent; spelling must match exactly. The order editor warns when no vehicle in the plan carries a tag you just required.

The Orders list with required-tag chips on the frozen and bulky orders

What the optimizer does with themCopy link

Compatibility is a hard constraint: the optimizer never breaks it to lower cost. In the tutorial plan, the three frozen orders always land on the freezer van and the bulky one on the box truck:

The solved tutorial: frozen orders on the freezer van's route, the tail-lift order on the box truck's

If no compatible vehicle can fit an order, it goes unassigned with a reason naming the tag problem.

Force allow and force denyCopy link

When the exception is per order rather than per capability, two vehicle fields override the tag rules for specific orders:

  • Force allow orders: this vehicle may serve the listed orders even if tags say otherwise.
  • Force deny orders: this vehicle may never serve them, tags notwithstanding. Deny wins over allow.

These cover one-offs: "customer refuses driver X", "only this van fits through the gate". If you keep force-listing the same kind of order, that kind is better expressed as a tag.

In spreadsheetsCopy link

Columns Required tags, Forbidden tags (orders) and Tags, Force allow, Force deny (vehicles) take comma-separated values; see the column reference.

Next stepCopy link

Tags decide which vehicle may serve an order. Which orders may share one route of that vehicle is decided by Product segregation: do not mix load classes. Pairing pickups with their deliveries is the other Pro constraint on which vehicle serves an order: see Pickup & delivery transfers.