Weight and volume properties
In a request to RouteQ, you can set the weight of orders and the load capacity of vehicles.
Two measurement systems are supported:
- Actual weight in kilograms and volume weight.
- Carrying capacity in abstract units (pallets, boxes, or kegs).
Actual weight
RouteQ lets you define the order weight or vehicle load capacity in kilograms.
If the order weight isn't specified, it's considered 0.
Carrying capacity in units
In addition to weight and volume units specified in the metric system, RouteQ supports setting the order size and vehicle load capacity in abstract units.
An abstract unit is usually a whole and indivisible object (such as a pallet, box, or keg). But sometimes you need to use some conventional units of measurement instead of cargo units (such as pallets). It usually happens when there are shipment specifics for different categories of products.
For example, pallet stacking is allowed for one product but not for another. This means the vehicle capacity will be different for products measured in pallets. In this case, at the stage of preparing input data, you need to calculate certain adjusted capacity values as units (to enable this, RouteQ supports fractional unit values).
For example, there's a vehicle with a capacity of 12 pallets, but you can stack 15 pallets of product 1 there. All other products require exactly 12 pallets. In this case, 1 pallet of product 1 must be converted to 0.8 regular pallets when the data is sent to RouteQ.
Note
The load capacity of a vehicle can be limited by the actual weight of orders or by the capacity in units. In this case, the vehicle is considered fully loaded when it reaches any of these limits.
For example, a vehicle's load capacity is limited to 20 tons or 10 pallets. The vehicle is fully loaded when any of these values is reached.