---
title: "Orbit Plan: What Are Virtual Vehicles?"
description: "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."
url: "https://support.pr-5.orbit.do/en/faq/what-are-virtual-vehicles"
locale: "en"
lastReviewed: "2026-10-27"
---

# Orbit Plan: What Are Virtual Vehicles?

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.

## What is a virtual vehicle?

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 a specific vehicle and has no driver. A virtual vehicle can stand for a carrier: a tour on it is then created for that carrier, without a vehicle.

Any tour that sits on a virtual vehicle gets its carrier, vehicle, and driver either on its card in Orbit Plan or on the `Tour` after you apply the plan. The route, stops, and schedule stay unchanged, only the executing party is filled in.

## The two kinds of virtual vehicles

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 has a grey **Copy of** tag on its card. Hover over the tag to read why the vehicle was copied and what happens when you apply the plan. 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.*

## Assigning a tour on its card

Every tour card in Orbit Plan has three buttons: the carrier, the driver, and the vehicle of the tour.

* **Select Carrier**: choose a carrier. The tour then runs on a virtual vehicle that stands for that carrier and keeps the capacities of the vehicle it had before. Choosing another carrier clears the driver.
* **Assign Driver**: choose a team and a driver of the tour's carrier. The button stays locked until the tour has a carrier.
* **Vehicle**: choose one of the carrier's active vehicles, or any active vehicle while the tour has no carrier. The vehicle's carrier becomes the tour's carrier.

To remove one of them, hold the cross on its button for a second (**Hold to Unassign**). The tour always stays in the plan:

* Removing the carrier also removes the driver and the vehicle. The tour is created unassigned.
* Removing the vehicle keeps the carrier and the driver. The tour is created for that carrier, without a vehicle.
* Removing the driver keeps the carrier and the vehicle.

This is different from **Remove Virtual Vehicles**, which takes the tours on copies out of the plan. A tour whose carrier or vehicle you changed on its card is no longer a copy, so **Remove Virtual Vehicles** leaves it in the plan.

Orbit Plan accepts any vehicle you choose and does not plan the tour again. If the vehicle does not fit, for example because it lacks an extra a shipment needs, a load is too tall or too heavy for it, or the stop times fall outside its driving times, the tour card shows a warning. The stops and their times stay as they were until you use **Re-optimize Tour** on the card or change the tour's stops.

When a vehicle drives several trips (the cards show **Trip 1/2**, **Trip 2/2**), a choice on one trip applies to every trip of that vehicle.

## Controlling what the planner may do

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.

## Example

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, to cover the overflow. Lucía reads this as a clear signal that she needs either an extra subcontractor or a second driver shift.

For one of the four tours she already knows the carrier, so she chooses it with **Select Carrier** on the tour card before she applies the plan, and that tour is created for the carrier. She offers the other three 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.

## Frequently asked questions

**Q: Why would a tour be planned on a virtual vehicle?**

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.

**Q: How do I recognise a virtual vehicle in the results?**

A tour on a virtual vehicle shows the vehicle class as a tag on its card,
and its **Vehicle** button shows no vehicle. When the virtual vehicle stands
for a carrier, the carrier button shows that carrier. A copy the planner
added carries a grey **Copy of** tag with the vehicle class name. Hover over
it to read that the selected fleet could not cover every shipment and that
you can assign a carrier, vehicle and driver on the tour card or after
applying the plan.

**Q: 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.

**Q: 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**.

**Q: Can I replace a virtual vehicle with a real vehicle after planning?**

Yes. Choose a vehicle with the **Vehicle** button on the tour card, or
assign a carrier, vehicle, and driver to the `Tour` after applying the plan.
The stops, schedule, and route are preserved.

**Q: 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.

**Q: 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.

**Q: 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.