Which vans may leave the yard, and which deliveries will be late?

The first hour of a delivery day decides the rest of it. By the time the vans are loaded, somebody has to know what is due, what nobody has taken, which vehicles are safe and legal to send, and which drivers can legally drive them. Usually that is three screens and a whiteboard. Here is the same hour asked of Rutba Assistant.

“What is due today, and what has nobody taken?”

GET /lg-consignments/board
GET /lg-consignments?unassigned=true

The board is counted in the database for one day: live consignments by status, the unassigned pool, what is due and what is already overdue, deliveries made and whether on time, late stops, and trips by state. The second call lists the unassigned consignments themselves. The answer leads with the overdue ones, because a delivery promised for yesterday is a customer already on the phone.

“Which vans may go out?”

GET /fl-vehicles/due
GET /fl-vehicles/board
GET /fl-defects

The first call lists every statutory date that has expired, is due, or is unknown, and every vehicle off the road. The compliance board counts the unknowns beside the expired rather than letting them pass as fine — a van whose inspection date nobody recorded is not a van with a valid inspection. The defects list defaults to what is open or in repair.

So the answer has three groups rather than two: vans that may go, vans that may not and why, and vans nobody can vouch for until a date is recorded. That third group is the one a whiteboard hides.

“Which drivers are close to their hours?”

GET /fl-drivers/{driver}/hours
GET /fl-drivers/{driver}/entitlement?asset={vehicle}

The hours call gives today, this week and this fortnight, the minutes since the last break, and the warnings against the rules your organization configured. It is explicit that it is never a certificate — a warning computed from the records, not a legal ruling — and the assistant repeats it as a warning, not as clearance.

The entitlement call answers the pairing: may this driver take this vehicle, and if not, every reason it found. The suite’s own check refuses on any one of them, so the assistant can tell the dispatcher before the driver reaches the key cabinet.

“Were we on time last month, and what does a kilometre cost us?”

GET /lg-consignments/analytics
GET /fl-vehicles/{vehicle}/cost

The analytics call measures on-time delivery against the promise made — the delivery window the customer was given — not against a target somebody set later. The cost call gives fuel, incidents, distance, cost per kilometre, energy per hundred kilometres and emissions, and it names what is not included in the figure. The assistant keeps that sentence in the answer. A cost per kilometre that silently leaves out insurance is a number that wins an argument it should lose.

For cash-on-delivery rounds there is one more: a trip’s cash session with every movement in it, which is where “the driver came back short” becomes a list of movements rather than an accusation.

Where it hands back to a person

• Assigning work. Putting consignments on a trip or a driver in a van changes the day’s plan; it is a plan a dispatcher approves, never a side effect of asking.
• Telling recipients. A delivery update that reaches a customer is yours to send, and it is on the short list of things Rutba Assistant will never be allowed to do.
• Taking a van off the road. The assistant can say a vehicle should not go out, and why. Marking it off the road is a person’s decision with a person’s name on it.