Allocation rules decide which driver receives each booking. The rule you choose affects pickup times, driver fairness, empty kilometres and how often dispatchers must intervene.
This guide explains the three common approaches, shows a worked example and ends with a worksheet you can use during any taxi dispatch software evaluation.
Nearest Available Vehicle
The system offers the job to the closest free driver by road distance or estimated time. It usually gives the fastest pickup for the rider.
The trade-off is fairness. Drivers waiting at a rank can be skipped repeatedly by drivers who keep moving, which creates friction in cooperatives and unions.
Zone Queues
The service area is split into zones. Drivers join the queue for the zone they are in and jobs are offered in queue order. This mirrors traditional rank discipline and is common at airports, stations and hotels.
Good software lets you set neighbouring zones to fall back to when a queue is empty, so a booking is never left waiting because one zone has no drivers.
Manual Allocation And Override
Dispatchers assign the job directly. It is essential for VIP accounts, accessible vehicles, school runs and complaints recovery.
Even with automation, confirm that a dispatcher can reassign, hold or cancel any job, and that every manual action is recorded.
Worked Example: Friday 18:00
A 40-taxi fleet receives 22 bookings in fifteen minutes. Eight drivers sit in the airport queue, twelve are roaming the centre and the rest are busy.
With nearest-vehicle only, centre drivers take almost every job and airport drivers wait. With zone queues and a two-zone fallback, centre jobs go to centre drivers first, and the airport queue is only drawn on when the centre is empty. A dispatcher holds two accessible-vehicle bookings for manual allocation.
Unaccepted Jobs And Advance Bookings
Ask what happens when a driver ignores an offer: how many seconds before it moves on, how many drivers are tried, and when a dispatcher is alerted.
Advance bookings should be released to drivers a set time before pickup, with a reminder and an escalation if no one accepts.
Evaluation Worksheet
1. Which allocation methods can run at the same time? 2. Can rules differ by zone, time of day or vehicle type? 3. What is the offer timeout and retry order? 4. How are manual overrides logged? 5. How are advance bookings released? 6. Which reports show allocation time and rejected offers?
Bring this worksheet to every vendor demo and ask them to show each answer live, not on a slide.