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Solution · Operations & qualityOne register answers dispatch before the load is planned, not after the roadside check
No driver dispatched on an expired document
Every dated document behind a driver and a vehicle sits in one register that recalculates itself nightly, warns early in Microsoft Teams, and answers dispatch before a load is assigned.
Executive summary
Driver and vehicle documents expire on fourteen calendars. Dispatch checks them by asking whoever keeps the file.
The register is deliberately dull: one row per driver or vehicle and document type, with the issuer, the reference, valid from, valid to.
Renewals are booked inside the lead time the rule sets, at planned prices and in slots that fit a rotation.
the register in Microsoft Lists; the evidence library on Microsoft SharePoint; the eligibility answer consumed by the TMS
Business problem
Fleet compliance
The papers that let a truck leave the yard belong to different owners and run on unrelated clocks. On the driver: the driver card, the qualification evidenced by Union code 95, the licence, medical and psychological certificates, ADR authorisation where the load needs it. On the vehicle: the roadworthiness inspection, the tachograph calibration, third-party and cargo insurance, the permit set. Each comes from a different body, on its own date.
What joins them is a list, and a list is a document about other documents whose authority ends when the last person stopped typing into it. Nothing reads it: not the planning board, not the TMS when a load is assigned, not the depot at handover. The country of operation adds a dimension the list never held. Bilateral work and transit without loading are not posting; cabotage and cross-trade are, and posting means a declaration through the IMI public interface before the work.
Then there is the tachograph. At a roadside check the driver must produce records for the current day and the preceding 56 days, and the undertaking must keep record sheets and printouts in chronological order and legible form for at least a year after their use. In practice, downloads happen when a vehicle is at the yard and somebody remembers the reader.
How it works today
This is the pattern we meet in carriers of this size, whatever the TMS.
- PersonThe fleet administrator keeps one workbook for drivers and one for vehicles, and files the certificates arriving from the clinic, the training provider, the inspection station and the broker
- PersonRenewals are noticed by scrolling the workbook, then chased by telephone, sometimes a week ahead, sometimes on the day
- WaitingDownloads wait for the vehicle to be at the depot and for somebody free to walk out with the reader
- Risk of errorDispatch plans on availability, hours and position, and checks validity when the planner happens to remember a date
- PersonA request from an authority or an insurer arrives, and the pack is rebuilt from payroll, the archive and the personnel file
- Risk of errorGaps surface where they cost most: at a roadside check, in a customer audit, or in an insurer's questions after a loss
Why the current process costs more than it appears
The most expensive part of this process has no cost line.
- Chasing is dearer than planning. A medical booked three days before it expires is taken at whatever slot the clinic offers, with a driver pulled off a rotation.
- Stopped vehicles are the cost nobody books to compliance: the load moves to another truck, a subcontractor is engaged at spot price, or the customer is told the collection window changed.
- A correct date in a spreadsheet is a claim, and rebuilding the proof behind it takes the transport manager, payroll and the fleet office off next week's work.
- Everything rests on one administrator's memory of which broker renews what, so holiday, illness or resignation turns an orderly fleet office into an archaeology exercise.
Cost of inaction
The register does not fail on the day a date passes. It fails on the day somebody has to prove the date was watched, and that day is chosen by a control officer, an insurer's adjuster or a customer's audit team. Outside the table sit the load moved to a subcontractor at spot price, the driver pulled off a rotation for an appointment that could have been planned, and the argument about what a driver held on the day of a loss.
Every new country, customer clause and vehicle class lands on the same administrator and the same workbook, and the honest answer to more work has always been more workbook. A carrier that adds depots faster than control ends up with a compliance position nobody, its own management included, can state on demand.
A plausible organisation with realistic proportions. The figures are there to be recalculated on your data; they are not a client result.
A road carrier with its own fleet, 210 drivers and 180 vehicles across three depots, running international, cross-trade and cabotage work in the EU, on Microsoft 365 E3 with a TMS and telematics.
14 dated document types per driver and per vehicle, so roughly 5,460 rows carrying an expiry date, of which about 190 fall due in any month. Periodic training runs on a five-year cycle of 35 hours; inspections and insurance renew annually.
Two workbooks and a shared drive of scans, renewals chased by telephone, downloads made when a vehicle happens to be at the depot, posting declarations prepared per job from the personnel file.
About 26 minutes a month per driver of tracking, chasing, re-checking and filing, spread across the fleet office and the transport manager, none of it visible to the people building tomorrow's plan.
One register of every dated document for drivers and vehicles, reconciled nightly against the TMS, the telematics platform, the provider mailboxes and the personnel system; warning horizons the company sets; escalation as the date approaches; downloads scheduled and checked; one eligibility answer for dispatch.
In the modelled case the 26 minutes becomes a confirmation for the routine majority, renewals close inside their lead time, and an evidence pack is an export instead of a reconstruction. Every figure here comes from the model below, not from a client's records.
Proposed solution
The register is deliberately dull: one row per driver or vehicle and document type, with the issuer, the reference, valid from, valid to, the file behind it and the status. Beside it sits the rule set that gives the row meaning: what each role and vehicle class requires, how long a document is valid, how much lead time a renewal needs, which countries of operation add an obligation, and whether a lapse stops work or only warns. The transport manager owns it, and every version carries a name and a date.
Robots collect nightly from where the truth already lives: the TMS for drivers, vehicles and planned work; telematics for the download log and the tachograph files; provider mailboxes for certificates; the personnel system for joiners, leavers and absences. Every status is then recomputed as valid, inside the warning horizon, expired, or required and never obtained. That last category is one no spreadsheet has shown, because a spreadsheet knows only about rows somebody created.
Downloads follow the same logic, with a due date per vehicle and per driver card and a check that the archived file covers the period. People meet the register in Microsoft Teams: a card for the fleet office at each horizon, escalations and a weekly depot view for the transport manager. Dispatch gets one answer to one question, asked about a driver, a vehicle and a country: yes, yes with a condition, or no with the reason. It arrives where the plan is made, and both question and answer are logged.
UiPath Orchestrator time triggers, queues and audit; UiPath Integration Service connectors for Microsoft Outlook 365, Teams and OneDrive & SharePoint, plus Connector Builder for the TMS and telematics APIs; UiPath Action Center actionable notifications in Microsoft Teams; Microsoft Lists rules and version history; Power BI
The register and its rule set per document type, role, vehicle class and country; the nightly reconciliation; status and horizon logic; escalation; the download schedule and coverage check; the dispatch answer and its log; the evidence library and the Power BI horizon
Read access to the TMS and telematics through their documented APIs, and scheduled file exchange or interface automation where a vendor provides none; the answer published as an API call or a list the TMS reads
How the automated process works
- AutomationOvernight, robots read drivers, vehicles and planned work from the TMS, the download log from telematics, certificates from provider mailboxes and personnel changes from the HR system
- SystemEach certificate is matched to a driver or a registration and filed as evidence, and every status is recomputed against the rule set, including documents a role requires and has never had
- AutomationWarning cards reach the fleet office in Microsoft Teams at each horizon, with the document, the date and a button that starts the renewal
- PersonThe fleet officer books the clinic, the training or the inspection slot and settles what rules cannot: provider capacity, absences, disputed requirements
- AutomationThe download schedule is checked per vehicle and per driver card; a missing or short file becomes a task for the depot before the vehicle leaves again
- AutomationDispatch queries the register for a driver, a vehicle and a country and receives yes, yes with a condition, or no with the reason; both sides are logged
Human-in-the-loop model
Automation handles
- Nightly collection and matching of certificates, download logs, personnel changes and planned work
- Recomputation of every status, including documents a role or vehicle class requires and nobody obtained
- Warnings at each horizon, escalation to the transport manager, and the answer dispatch receives
People decide
- Which documents each role, vehicle class and country of operation requires, and the lead time each renewal needs
- Whether a driver or vehicle may work when a rule meets reality: a delayed appointment, a certificate in transit, a disputed requirement
- Every declaration to an authority, and every release of a load a rule has stopped, recorded with the reason and the person behind it
Before and after
Systems and integrations
Everything below runs on licences and systems you already hold, or would need anyway.
Inputs
- TMS drivers, vehicles and planned work
- telematics download log and tachograph files
- provider and broker mailboxes
- personnel system for joiners, leavers and absences
Automation layer
- UiPath Orchestrator
- UiPath Robots
- UiPath Integration Service
- UiPath Action Center
Target systems
- the register in Microsoft Lists
- the evidence library on Microsoft SharePoint
- the eligibility answer consumed by the TMS
- Power BI
Human touchpoints: warning and escalation cards in Microsoft Teams; Action Center tasks in Teams; the depot download list
Technologies used
nightly runs on time triggers, queues, retries and the audit record behind every status change
AMicrosoft Outlook 365, Teams and OneDrive & SharePoint connectors; Connector Builder for the TMS and telematics APIs
Arenewal and exception tasks completed as actionable notifications inside Microsoft Teams
Aexpiry warnings, escalations and the daily block list for the fleet office and depots
Athe register itself: one row per document, with item rules and version history
Athe evidence library holding the certificate behind every row, with retention applied
Asource of drivers, vehicles, planned work, download logs and tachograph files
CIllustrative economic model
A model, not a promise.
Vehicle documents are not priced below, which understates the pool on purpose: the model counts the driver file only, at 26 minutes a month of tracking, chasing and filing across the fleet office and the transport manager. €21 an hour is a fully loaded administrative rate for a Central European carrier, and nothing here was measured at a client.
Run the numbers on your data
An illustrative estimate from your own inputs. It models released capacity; it is not a promise of savings.
Business benefits
- Renewals are booked inside the lead time the rule sets, at planned prices and in slots that fit a rotation
- No load reaches a driver or vehicle whose paperwork does not permit it, because the check sits where the plan is made
- Downloads become a schedule with confirmations and gap checks, and the evidence a customer, an insurer or an authority asks for is exported with the certificates attached
- The fleet office moves from chasing dates to handling exceptions, and growth in drivers, vehicles and countries is absorbed by the rule set
The management view
- Compliance is visible as a horizon, by depot and by document type, instead of an answer somebody assembles when asked
- Eligibility decisions leave a trail: what the register knew, what dispatch asked, and who released a load against a rule
- The control survives the people who operate it, because the rules are written down and applied identically at every depot
Board-level KPIs
Security and governance
An auditor should be able to reconstruct every decision.
- Robots read the TMS, telematics and the personnel system through dedicated service accounts with read-only rights, and write only to the register and the evidence library
- Medical and psychological certificates are treated as the sensitive personal data they are: the register holds the fact, the reference and the dates, the document stays in the evidence library, and access is granted by group
- Register and evidence sit in your own Microsoft 365 tenant, the robots run from the EU region of UiPath Automation Cloud, and retention is set with Microsoft Purview labels to match what the undertaking must keep
- Every status change, warning, dispatch question and release against a rule carries an identity and a timestamp, which is what turns the register into evidence
Why now
Light commercial vehicles above 2.5 tonnes and up to 3.5 tonnes in international transport or cabotage came under the tachograph and driving-time rules on 1 July 2026, so a register built for tractor units now has a second fleet to cover
Drivers are the scarce resource, not the trucks: the IRU report published on 30 June 2026 puts unfilled truck driver positions in Europe at around 502,000, which makes a driver who cannot legally be dispatched costlier than the modelled €1,911 a month of administration suggests
The build is assembly rather than development: scheduled robots, documented Microsoft 365 connectors, tasks completed inside Microsoft Teams and a list-based register are all standard
Relevant executive roles
Tomorrow's plan stops depending on whether a planner remembered a date, and the fleet's ability to run becomes a number rather than an assumption
Obligations that sit personally with this role become a rule set applied every night and evidenced on demand, instead of a workbook and a good memory
Unplanned renewals, spot subcontracting and idle vehicles stop being an unattributed operating cost that nobody can size
Common questions and objections
Then it holds a hand-typed copy of dates that live somewhere else, and it knows nothing about the country of operation, the tachograph archive or the certificate behind the date. We reconcile those fields nightly against the issuing sources and give the TMS a checked answer.
Most do not, and the design does not depend on it. Cards go to the fleet office, the depot and the transport manager, who already work in Teams; drivers are reached the way your company already reaches them, and the control holds because dispatch sees the block list either way.
It does not. The register answers with a rule and the evidence behind it; a named person decides. Releasing a load against a rule is allowed, and recorded with the reason and the person who gave it, which is exactly the evidence missing today.
When this is not the right solution
- Fleets of twenty or thirty vehicles where one person keeps a wall calendar and knows every driver, so the register would be a heavier control than the risk
- Source data that exists only on paper or in individual mailboxes: build the register first, because there is nothing yet to reconcile against
- Dispatch that will not consume the answer, because planning happens on the telephone and stays there; without that step the result is a better spreadsheet, not a control
A question for the next management meeting
Before the first truck leaves tomorrow, can this company name the driver and vehicle combinations it must not dispatch, and does that answer come from a system or from the person who keeps the file?
Implementation approach
The first week looks the same at every client: we look at the data.
We deliver
- A working session on document types, validity rules, lead times and countries, ending in a rule set the transport manager signs
- The register and evidence library in your Microsoft 365 tenant, populated from today's workbooks and scan folders
- The nightly reconciliation against the TMS, telematics, provider mailboxes and the personnel system, including the download schedule
- Warning horizons, escalation and the weekly depot view in Microsoft Teams, plus the dispatch answer, its logging and the Power BI horizon
We need from you
- An export of your driver and vehicle document lists, however incomplete, and the scan folders behind them
- A named owner for the rule set, normally the transport manager, and one fleet officer for the pilot depot
- Technical read accounts for the TMS, the telematics platform and the personnel system
- Your current warning practice: who is told, how far ahead, and what happens when nobody responds
Stages
Discovery
Document types, rules, lead times, countries, volumes and the state of today's data
Design
Register model, rule set, horizons, escalation path, the dispatch question, security model
Build
Reconciliation robots, Teams cards, download schedule, dispatch answer and reporting
Validation
Parallel run against the workbook on one depot until register and people agree
Go-live
Depot by depot, with the dispatch answer switched on once the data is trusted
Quick win. Effort is driven by how many source systems give up their data cleanly and how much of the register must be rebuilt from scans rather than imported.
Dispatch plans on who is available. Whether they may drive is checked by memory.
Send us your driver and vehicle document lists for one depot, however messy, with the countries those trucks work in. You get back the rule set we would apply, the gaps already visible in your data, and a first estimate of the administration it removes.
Check one depot against the rulesThe neighbouring process usually has the same problem
A dispatcher decides what is monitored, types the notification and hopes nobody swaps the trailer.
View solution HR & peopleQualifications and training tracked before they expireYour training register is only as current as the last time someone remembered to update it.
View solution ProcurementThe carrier you booked is the carrier that shows upYour carrier file is built from documents the carrier chose to send you.
View solutionIndustries we deliver this in most oftenTransport & logistics