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Cut Taxi and Train Costs with Automatic Trade Plate Carpooling
Rupert Wood
JIGCAR SHIPS #01 - Carpooling
This is the first post in Jigcar Ships — a running series covering new features as they go live.
Trade plate planning is built on movement efficiency. But one cost has always been hard to control: getting platers to the start of their next movement. A driver finishes in Birmingham and needs to get back to Derby. Two platers are both heading to Wolverhampton from the same yard. Without a system that can see across all of it, you end up booking taxis and trains.
Jigcar now analyses every pending movement across your plater network and automatically identifies when two or more drivers can share a carry car — travelling together to a collection point or back to base. Planners see suggested carpools right alongside the standard planning board, and confirm them in a single click.
One regional trade plate business using carpooling in beta reduced its taxi and rail spend by £2,800 in the first month, across roughly 380 movements.
The Hidden Cost of Getting Platers to the Next Job
Every movement has two cost components: the movement itself, and getting the driver to and from it. Most TMS platforms are built around the first half — planning the move itself. The second half, getting the driver to the next job or back to base, is usually handled informally: a message to the plater, a phone call, a taxi booking. No coordination across drivers, no visibility of who’s already heading in the right direction.
This isn’t a new problem in road transport. In freight haulage it’s commonly addressed through backloading — filling otherwise-empty return capacity with a paying load instead of running back empty. Trade plate movements have the same structural gap, just for driver transit rather than cargo, and until now there’s been no equivalent system to close it. Planners have had the will to coordinate shared journeys, just not the visibility across the whole network to spot them in time.
For businesses processing hundreds of movements a month, those costs compound fast. A single missed carpool opportunity can mean an unnecessary £80 taxi. Multiply that across a working month and it becomes a meaningful line on the P&L — and one that’s historically been almost impossible to plan around, since it depends on knowing what every other driver is doing at the same moment.
How Jigcar’s Carpooling Feature Works
Jigcar finds carpool opportunities automatically, and confirms them without adding a single step to your existing planning routine.
STEP 01
Finds opportunities automatically
As movements are logged and drivers assigned, the planning engine continuously looks for drivers heading to similar locations within the same time window — travelling to a collection site together or sharing a return leg.
STEP 02
Surfaces suggestions on the board
Each suggestion shows which drivers are grouped, the route they’d share, and the estimated saving. Review and confirm without leaving the board — no separate tool, no extra login.
STEP 03
Notifies drivers automatically
Once confirmed, the arrangement reaches every relevant driver through the Jigcar driver app: pickup point, co-passengers, and departure time, with no further coordination from the planning team.
STEP 04
Tracks cost per movement
Every saved taxi journey is logged against the relevant movement record, so cumulative carpooling savings are visible over any period in the Jigcar reporting dashboard.
Real Results: £2,800 Saved in the First Month
By the numbers:
£60–80 — typical taxi cost avoided on every shared journey
15 minutes — average planner time spent coordinating transit manually, now removed
One click — to confirm a Jigcar carpool suggestion straight from the board
A worked example: three platers, one collection site
Three platers are all due at the same collection yard on the same morning. Here’s how the job changes:
Without carpooling | With carpooling | |
|---|---|---|
Vehicles to yard | 3 separate taxis | 1 shared carry car |
Planner effort | Calls each driver individually | Confirmed in one click |
Transit cost | £225 (£75 × 3) | £75 total |
Coordination time | 15 minutes | None |
£150 saved on a single job, with no extra coordination time spent finding it.
Built for Businesses Planning Driven Vehicles Movements
Carpooling is especially valuable in trade plate operations, where the driver-to-movement ratio is high and travel logistics are complex. Unlike a fleet based at a single depot, trade platers work across a wide geography: auction sites, dealer yards, and manufacturer compounds. The number of potential carpool matches on any given day, if you can see them all, is significant — and grows with every additional site and driver in the network.
The feature accounts for the variables that matter in trade plate planning: site opening windows, driver availability, movement priority, and geographic proximity. Suggestions are ranked so the highest-value opportunities appear first, so planners aren’t left sorting through low-value matches to find the ones worth confirming.
Getting Started
Carpooling is available now for all Jigcar TMS customers, with no change to your existing workflow. Carpools appear as a new section on the board. You see them when they’re available and ignore them when they’re not relevant.
Not yet a Jigcar customer? Book a demo and we will walk you through a live carpooling example using your own movement volumes.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does Jigcar decide which drivers to carpool?
Does carpooling change how drivers use the app?
Is carpooling included in my current plan?
