How logistics teams watch the roads around their depots

Logistics teams watch the roads around their depots by checking, on a short timetable during operating hours, for closures, roadworks and incidents within a few kilometres of each depot, and how fast traffic is moving on the roads right outside. When something new appears, dispatch and the drivers about to leave hear about it at once, in the channel they already read. The aim is simple: no van should find a closed road by driving up to it.

This article is for dispatchers, transport managers and operations leads at delivery, courier, wholesale and field-service companies. It covers what dispatch decides each morning, which road signals help and which are noise, two AI employees (one for alerts, one for a weekly review), and the mistakes that make drivers mute the channel.

What dispatch decides before the first van leaves

The early part of a depot's day is a string of small decisions: which exit the vans use, whether the first drops go north or south, whether to send the big lorry the long way round, whether to warn customers on one side of the city that deliveries will be late, and whether a supplier's inbound truck will make its slot. Each decision depends on what the roads look like in the first hour, and most teams still find out from a driver's phone call after the problem has already cost time.

Later in the day the same questions return for collections and returns. A closure that appears at 14:00 matters to the afternoon run just as much.

The road signals that help

• Closures, roadworks and other incidents. The Traffic incidents block finds them live from online maps, around each depot within a radius you set from 100 m to 20 km, with their kind, street, district and position. Accidents are reported as road closures for now.
• How traffic is moving right now. The Traffic Flow block measures the roads around each depot at the moment the flow runs: the current speed and the speed when roads are free, a jam factor from 0 to 10, the congestion as a percentage, a level in words from free flowing to standstill, how many roads were measured and how many are closed, and the busiest road.
• The weather. Heavy rain or strong wind on the route is a reason to plan longer, and the Weather forecast block can sit in the same flow.

The alert employee, every 15 minutes

Here is a made-up case: a parcel company with four depots around Johannesburg that opens its gates at 05:30.

1. Schedule: every 15 minutes, active on weekdays between 05:00 and 19:00, so nothing fires at night.
2. My data: the depot list, each with its position and the name of its shift lead.
3. Traffic incidents: around each incoming place, 3,000 m, road closures and roadworks.
4. Only new: an incident already sent is not sent again every quarter of an hour.
5. A message to the depot's drivers' group or the dispatch channel, with the street, the kind of incident and a map link.

What lands is a short message, only when something new appears near a depot: "Road closure on the main road, 1.2 km from the north depot, reported in the last 15 minutes." Quiet mornings send nothing, which is what keeps people reading the channel.

For two to five key sites, the When something changes trigger can do the same job with less setup: set it to a road closure near a site, pick the places and the distance, and how often to check. It runs the flow only when it finds a new closure.

The weekly review employee

Alerts help today; a weekly review helps next month. A second flow runs every Monday, searches each depot's surroundings for roadworks and closures, and asks an AI step to summarise what is likely to affect next week's runs.

1. Schedule: every Monday at 06:00.
2. My data: depots and main customer sites.
3. Traffic incidents: around each incoming place, roadworks and closures.
4. Traffic Flow: the roads within 500 m of each depot, for the jam factor and the busiest road at that moment.
5. xMap LLM, on the whole list: a short note per depot on what to plan around.
6. Make a report: a PDF with the note, a map and the list, emailed to the transport manager.

Run it for a few weeks and the same streets will keep appearing. That is the list to raise with the city, or the reason to move a loading bay to the other side of the yard.

Mistakes that make drivers mute the channel

• Alerts all night. Set active hours on the schedule so checks stop when the depot is closed.
• The same closure again and again. Keep Only new in the flow, so each incident is sent once.
• Too wide a radius. A closure 15 km away rarely matters at the gate. Start at 2 to 3 km and widen for depots on the edge of town.
• Mixing every incident kind. Drivers care about closures and roadworks; minor incidents can go to a weekly report instead.
• Reading speed as volume. A jam factor tells you how blocked a road is, not how many vehicles use it.

Cities differ, so the same flow is tuned per depot: a site in central Bangkok or Madrid needs a tight radius and frequent checks, one on a ring road near Chicago a wider radius and fewer. Templates to start from: road closures near my depots, every hour, road speeds outside my depots, every hour, a weekly road disruption report and road closures in my city. The logistics and delivery page has more, including route planning and charging around depots.