Spotting a route falling behind
How delay is measured, when a trip is flagged at risk, and what to look at first.
- Written for
- Dispatchers
- Reading time
- 1 min
- Last reviewed
- July 31, 2026
Delay is measured against the published plan continuously: the difference between where a vehicle should be by now and where it actually is, projected forward across the rest of its route.
At-risk trips
A trip is flagged at risk when the projection says its window or appointment will be missed — not when it is already late. That distinction is the entire point: a trip flagged after the fact is a report, and a trip flagged before it slips is something you can still act on.
Diagnosing it
- Open the trip's event history. Long dwell at a pickup is a different problem from long travel between stops.
- Check whether the delay is one long stop or accumulated drift across several — the first is recoverable on this route, the second usually is not.
- Look at what is downstream. A single at-risk appointment is often best solved by moving that one trip rather than rebuilding the route.