01
Trips in
Daily · Intake
- Handoff check: Only checked trips go on the board
02
Plan the day
The evening before · Dispatch
- Handoff check: Plan finished and riders confirmed the evening before
03
Run the day
Daily · Dispatch
- Handoff check: Signature, times and odometer captured at the curb
04
Get paid
Daily · Billing
- Handoff check: Claim out the same day, and the money closes the loop↑ Back to trips in
Trips in
The problem
“There’s no simple way to take in a trip.”
Trips arrive through broker portals, emailed files, facility phone calls and texts to a dispatcher’s own phone. A plan built from four inboxes is missing a trip that nobody has noticed yet. Getting every trip to land in one place is the highest-return change available in the loop.
Then make accepting a trip a decision rather than a default. Before it goes on the board, check that it is authorized, that the rate clears the floor from Vision, and that it fits the day you already have. A standing order is worth more than a single trip, so price it that way.
A ninety-second check at intake saves a surprise at billing weeks later, after the trip has been run, the driver paid and the fuel burned.
Plan the day
The problem
“Tomorrow’s plan is a scramble at 6 am.”
Ask what time tomorrow is finished. If the answer is “in the morning”, the day starts already reacting, and the first cancellation lands on a plan that is still being built.
Finish it the evening before. Every trip has a driver and a time, built on real drive times rather than habit, and every rider gets a confirmation call the day before. Confirmation calls catch cancellations and wrong addresses while there is still time to fix the route.
Then check that someone other than the person who built the plan could run it. A route that depends on what one driver knows, like which building has its entrance at the back, works until that driver is out.
Run the day
The problem
“No-shows and will-calls burn my day.”
By nine in the morning some of the plan is wrong: a dialysis run cancels, a driver calls out, a discharge runs two hours long. That is a normal day, and rebuilding routes by hand is slow. At Ride Well, rebuilding one route after a cancellation took 10 to 20 minutes.
So decide the common exceptions before the day starts, with a name against each decision:
| When | Decide in advance |
|---|---|
| A trip cancels | Whether the route closes up or the driver waits, and who makes that call |
| A driver calls out | Which routes get covered, which get split, and which trips you hand back early in the morning rather than mid-morning |
| A will-call comes in | Who owns the return, and what pickup time the facility is promised |
| A rider is a no-show | How long the driver waits, what gets recorded at the curb, and who tells the facility |
Keep riders and facilities told as the day changes. A call with an updated pickup time takes a minute. A facility left chasing its rides starts looking for another provider.
Done this way, a well-run day is boring. The cancelled run gets absorbed, and nobody raises their voice.
Get paid
The problem
“A missing signature means a denied claim.”
Every claim has a resubmission window, so each day you wait to submit comes out of the time you have to fix a denial. Submit the same day and a denial comes back while the driver still remembers the trip. Submit at month end and much of the window is already gone.
That puts the weight on what the driver captures at the curb: the signature or attestation, the odometer, the actual pickup and drop-off times, and anything unusual about the trip. None of it can be honestly rebuilt on Friday.
The days between a trip completing and its claim going out are the ones you control, which is why the Scoreboard measures days to payment from completion rather than from submission.