Let’s explore the options for working with dedicated fleets through our API.
Note that dedicated fleets must be set up in your account/s by your Account Manager. For more information on account set up options see account creation options.
What is the ‘on-demand’ fleet?
By default, the orders you create with us via API or dashboard use our ‘on-demand’ fleet. This is a large pool of independent couriers that can fulfil Stuart customers delivery requests.
What is a ‘dedicated’ fleet?
A dedicated fleet is a designated fleet of couriers that will work for your store/s only. Using dedicated fleets can help ensure supply for particular time slots, a dedicated fleet could be ensured to have particular equipment, or could be trained in a specific way to fit your needs.
How can I use one dedicated fleet for all orders by default?
By having a Stuart account which is set up with only a single dedicated fleet, any jobs created through our API will target this fleet by default.
How can I target various fleets at will?
Perhaps you want to use a dedicated fleet just for peak hours, perhaps you want some orders to target the dedicated fleet but not others…
Stuart accounts could be set up with more than one fleet, this may or may not include our on-demand fleet. In this case, you’ll need to define the fleet that you wish to target in the job creation request:
{
"job": {
"fleets": [21,1],
...
}
}
In the future we plan to offer fleet fallback, you can already provide an array of fleets but currently our dispatcher will only target the first in the list. However, our support teams will be able to manually assign your order to any fleet defined in this array if needed. Therefore we always advise that you provide the dedicated fleet ID you wish to target in the first value of the array, followed by the on-demand fleet (ID:“1”), or any other dedicated fleets you may wish to fallback to.
How can I track driver online / offline status for my dedicated fleet?
You can receive driver online/offline webhooks for dedicated fleets which can be used to gauge how many drivers are online in the fleet at any given time. This knowledge can be used to verify the number of couriers available, and can be used to aid in business logic to verify, for example:
- if the fleet is able to meet the demand of the incoming orders
- when to start preparing the order
- whether to assign a given order to a different fleet to manage demand