As of 13 August 2026, AI can only partly schedule deliveries and drivers.

What to actually do

1. Hand it to a person

   The route this page recommends

   A person who owns the outcome does this end to end, worth it when the failure is dear.

2. Use a tool built for this

   Second choice

3. Do it yourself

   The distant third

   A chat interface, power-user skill, and roughly 1 hour until you can act on the result.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open the order system, driver rota, vehicle list and depot records, then export or copy the current delivery references, locations, time windows, loads and special requirements.
   2. Gather each driver's availability, start and finish location, skills and restrictions, together with every vehicle's capacity, type and restrictions.
   3. Add the travel times between relevant locations and the business rules for depot opening, delivery priorities, loading and unloading, without filling gaps with estimates.
   4. Paste the complete information into the prompt and ask the chatbot for a draft schedule, unassigned deliveries, conflicts and missing information.
   5. Compare every proposed stop, time window, load and vehicle assignment against the source records and mark any item that does not match.
   6. Give the draft to the dispatcher or operations manager to check route feasibility, current road conditions, driver suitability and workload before sending confirmed instructions to drivers.

   Prompt

   Create a proposed delivery and driver schedule from the data below.
   
   Business rules:
   - Use only facts supplied in the data.
   - Do not invent travel times, road conditions, driver availability, vehicle capacity, legal limits or customer preferences.
   - Keep every delivery within its stated time window where the supplied information makes that possible.
   - Respect driver availability, vehicle capacity, vehicle requirements, depot start and finish points, driver skills and delivery priorities.
   - Use the supplied travel times only. If a required travel time is missing, mark the assignment as needing confirmation rather than guessing.
   - Flag every conflict, unassigned delivery, overloaded vehicle, impossible sequence and assumption.
   - Do not claim that the schedule is safe, legally compliant or optimal. Present it as a draft for dispatcher approval.
   
   Return:
   1. A table with driver, vehicle, stop order, delivery reference, address or area, planned arrival, time window, load, and any required skill or vehicle condition.
   2. A separate list of unassigned deliveries and the exact reason for each.
   3. A list of conflicts and missing information.
   4. A short set of checks a dispatcher must complete before sending the schedule to drivers.
   
   Data:
   [DEPOT LOCATIONS AND OPENING TIMES]
   [DELIVERIES: REFERENCE, LOCATION, TIME WINDOW, LOAD, PRIORITY, SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS]
   [DRIVERS: NAME OR ID, AVAILABILITY, SKILLS, START AND FINISH LOCATION]
   [VEHICLES: ID, CAPACITY, TYPE, RESTRICTIONS]
   [TRAVEL TIMES BETWEEN LOCATIONS]
   [OTHER BUSINESS RULES]

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.