How virtual vehicles work in Orbit Plan: as placeholders you add yourself, and as copies of a vehicle the planner may add when your fleet is not enough.
Virtual vehicles are placeholder vehicles used inside Orbit Plan. They let you plan tours before a specific carrier, vehicle, or driver has been chosen, and they give the planner a safety net when your selected fleet is not large enough to cover every shipment.
A virtual vehicle is not a real truck in your fleet. It is a placeholder the planner uses to represent capacity that could move a set of shipments. A virtual vehicle behaves like a real one during planning: it has dimensions, capacity, extras, and working hours, but it is not linked to a specific carrier, vehicle, or driver.
Once planning is finished, any tour that sits on a virtual vehicle can be reassigned to a real carrier, vehicle, and driver before it is dispatched. The route, stops, and schedule stay unchanged, only the executing party is filled in.
You will come across virtual vehicles in two situations inside Orbit Plan.
Virtual vehicles you add yourself. Open Add vehicles → Virtual Vehicles and add a placeholder based on one of your saved vehicle classes. This is useful when you want to plan the routes first and decide later which carrier or subcontractor will execute them, for example when preparing tours to offer on the spot market, or when you want a fully planned day ready before your morning carrier briefing. Virtual vehicles can also be part of a saved Fleet Template (Save as Template in the vehicle list).
Copies the planner adds automatically. If the fleet you selected cannot cover every shipment under the given constraints (capacity limits, time windows, working hour regulations), Orbit Plan may plan one of your vehicles a second time, as a copy with the same capacities and time windows. The resulting tour is marked Copy of that vehicle and carries a small copy icon on the tour card, and a notice above the tours lists every plan that uses copies.
A tour planned on a copy is Orbit Plan telling you: your selected fleet was not enough here, and you would need additional capacity, a subcontractor, or a second shift to cover this workload.
The Avoid copying vehicles switch under Cost priorities in the planner options controls whether the planner may plan a vehicle a second time.
Off: the planner may add copies when your fleet is not enough. You usually get a full plan, even when capacity is tight.
On: copies become extremely expensive, not forbidden. A shipment that no longer fits is usually left unplanned instead, so the plan reflects the fleet you selected.
The default depends on the planning profile you have selected. The managed Max Efficiency profile allows copies, so that Orbit Plan can return a plan even when capacity is tight. The managed Balanced profile avoids them, so that the plan reflects your selected fleet. A plan that already contains copies shows a notice above its tours; Remove Virtual Vehicles takes the copies out again.
Lucía, a dispatcher in Madrid, is preparing tomorrow's 42 pallet deliveries across Spain and southern France. She does not yet know which carriers will be available, so she opens Orbit Plan, loads the day's shipments, and under Add vehicles → Virtual Vehicles she adds four Standard 7.5 t placeholders from her vehicle class list.
She starts the optimisation and receives four feasible tours. Because demand is higher than usual, Orbit Plan also plans one of the four a second time, as a fifth tour marked Copy of that placeholder and shown with a copy icon, to cover the overflow. Lucía reads this as a clear signal that she needs either an extra subcontractor or a second driver shift.
She offers the first four tours to her preferred carriers. Once each carrier accepts, she assigns the real vehicle and driver to the tour, and the plan goes live in Orbit Connect and Orbit Cockpit.
Either because you deliberately added a placeholder before picking a carrier, or because Orbit Plan copied one of your vehicles to produce a feasible plan with your current fleet.
How do I recognise a virtual vehicle in the results?
Virtual vehicles appear on a tour card without a specific carrier or vehicle attached. A copy the planner added carries Copy of in its name and a copy icon with the tooltip "This virtual Vehicle has been added automatically during optimization. After planning, a Carrier, Vehicle and Driver can be assigned."
Does a virtual vehicle cost anything in the plan?
Yes. Using a virtual vehicle carries an internal penalty cost, so the planner only chooses one when it is the better option: for example when your real fleet is full, or when a second run of an existing vehicle would be significantly cheaper than adding another real one. The penalty is tuned by the active planning profile.
How do I stop the planner from copying my vehicles?
Turn on Avoid copying vehicles under Cost priorities in the planner options. Copies then cost so much that the planner leaves a shipment unplanned rather than add one. A plan that already has copies loses them with Remove Virtual Vehicles.
Can I replace a virtual vehicle with a real vehicle after planning?
Yes. Once a tour has been produced, you can assign a real carrier, vehicle, and driver to it before dispatching. The stops, schedule, and route are preserved.
What is the difference between a vehicle class and a virtual vehicle?
A vehicle class is a reusable template: a definition of a kind of vehicle, such as a 40 t articulated lorry or a 3.5 t van. A virtual vehicle is an instance created from that template for a single planning run. You can add several virtual vehicles from the same vehicle class to plan several parallel tours.
Can I save a mix of virtual and real vehicles for reuse?
Yes. The Fleet Template feature lets you save any combination of real and virtual vehicles and load them into future planning runs with one click.
When should I use virtual vehicles instead of real ones?
Use virtual vehicles when you want to plan capacity before committing to a carrier (for example when tendering tours on the spot market), when you want to explore "what if" scenarios with different fleet sizes, or when you rely on subcontractors that you assign only after the plan is finalised.
