Industry · Field Service

Field service route planning for maintenance and repair teams

The phone rings, equipment is down, and you need a slot right now. Trailo suggests the best day and technician based on the address — before you hang up — and plans the routes of all vehicles together: maintenance visits up to a month ahead, breakdowns into the running route. Your ERP or CRM stays in charge of jobs and invoicing.

14 days free · No credit card · Excel/CSV import, Zapier or API

No credit card · With your own jobs · Cancel anytime

The challenge

Your plan rarely survives the morning

Four pain points we hear over and over from dispatchers and field service teams.

  • "When can you come?" No answer on the phone

    Customer calls, wants an appointment. Dispatcher says: "I'll get back to you." Has to look at the tour, shuffle in Excel, call the technician. Thirty minutes later a callback — and the customer has already called someone else.

  • Address errors cost half the day

    Two house numbers swapped, an entry pointing at a cul-de-sac instead of the industrial estate. The technician is 8 km off, the next three stops shift, the day breaks — and no system warned beforehand.

  • Recurring service contracts in Excel limbo

    30 customers on quarterly maintenance, 15 monthly, 5 semi-annual. Every month the same routine: turn contracts into appointments, distribute in Excel, puzzle the tours together. One person, three days, every time.

  • Maintenance docs on paper land late (or never) in the system

    Maintenance report, photo of the defect, customer signature — all on the clipboard. Handed in at night, typed up Monday, in the CRM by Wednesday. In between, slips lie around, get lost, or arrive illegible.

Many teams switch to a digital planning board at this point. The calendar looks better, but the question stays the same: who can still take the breakdown today, and which day suits the scheduled visit best? Only an optimization that calculates all tours at once answers that.

Sound familiar? Play with real data — 14 days, no credit card.

Live demo

How your 15-min demo works

No obligation, directly with the founder, no sales team. Most useful from about 10 technicians or vehicles, or if Trailo should connect to your ERP; smaller teams are often faster testing on their own.

  • 1 · Your business

    You briefly describe your field service.

  • 2 · Planned live

    We plan a sample tour live in Trailo — you see in minutes how it looks for your case.

  • 3 · All features

    Form builder, offline app, recurring contracts, connection to your system — we show everything that matters to you.

  • 4 · Your questions

    Pricing, rollout, data protection — all answered directly, no obligation.

Felix Bächle, founder of Trailo
Felix Bächle · Founder
I'll show you Trailo personally — in 15 min, no obligation.
Book 15-min live demo
How Trailo solves it

"I'll get back to you" turns into "Thursday, 09:30, does that work?"

  1. Slot suggestion in seconds, right during the call

    Type the address, Trailo checks existing tours in the region and suggests the best day and time window instantly. The dispatcher gives the caller a concrete commitment before the call ends.

    • ✓Address-based suggestion in seconds
    • ✓Considers existing tours, capacity, region
    • ✓Manual override if the suggestion doesn't fit
  2. Addresses that don't end in a cul-de-sac

    Trailo uses automotive-grade map data from an established European premium provider. Typos, missing house numbers and ambiguous streets get flagged for clarification before the technician sets out — no wasted miles to wrong destinations. Drive times are calculated with typical traffic patterns like rush hour factored in instead of idealized free-flow speeds — for arrival times at the customer that come very close to actual drive times.

    • ✓Addresses validated before planning
    • ✓Ambiguous matches flagged for manual confirmation
    • ✓Works the same for industrial estates and rural addresses
  3. Bulk planning up to a month ahead

    Service contracts on quarterly, monthly or semi-annual rhythm — set them up once, Trailo generates the appointments up to a month ahead and slots them into tours automatically. Hours of Excel choreography gone.

    • ✓Recurring tasks from contracts
    • ✓Bulk planning up to 30 days ahead
    • ✓Fixed and flexible stops mixable in one tour
    • ✓Fixed driver assignment per order or per customer when the customer always wants the same technician
  4. Form builder (Operator) + REST API into your existing system

    Maintenance report, defect photo, signature — digital in the form with the Operator plan. Answers exportable as CSV, routes downloadable as PDF. Via the REST API (from Professional) your ERP creates jobs and reads their status.

    • ✓Form builder with conditional logic
    • ✓CSV export of answers, PDF export of the daily route
    • ✓Fully documented REST API (from Professional)

See it in action — 14-day trial with your own data, or have us walk you through it in 15 minutes.

What you save

Sample calculation: 10-technician team

A worked example based on assumptions, not measured customer results. Plug in your own numbers.

  • Daily planning time ~ €11,000 1 h planning/day saved × 220 working days × €50/h dispatcher
  • Fuel cost ~ €6,000 −15 % × €4,000/year/vehicle × 10 vehicles
  • Additional capacity + 2,200 stops +1 stop/technician/day × 10 technicians × 220 working days — revenue effect = depending on contribution margin
  • Contract setup ~ €3,600 1 day/month saved × 12 months × €50/h × 6 h — through bulk planning instead of manual Excel choreography

Note on the calculation: Values are based on route optimization benchmarks and plausible assumptions for a 10-technician team. Individual savings depend on setup, tour profile, capacity, order mix and hourly rates — deviations up and down are normal. Plug in your own numbers if you need a reliable forecast.

FAQ

Specific to field service

Can we connect our existing ERP/CRM?

Yes — through the fully documented REST API (from Professional) your system creates customers, jobs and stops and reads their status. To get started, CSV/Excel import is enough. How much effort the integration takes depends on your ERP's interface; we are happy to clarify that in the demo.

What if 50 % of our orders come in same-day, last minute?

That's exactly what Trailo is built for. Type the address, Trailo suggests a fitting slot — the dispatcher confirms with one click. If the suggestion doesn't fit: move the stop by hand and it lands wherever you want.

Can we set a specific customer to always get the same technician?

Yes. You can set fixed drivers per order or per customer — Trailo factors this in automatically. On vacation or sick leave, override manually.

Do technicians need to install an app?

With the driver app for iOS and Android: recommended, but not required. As an interim, you share tours as PDF — technicians get their daily route with stops, time windows and addresses.

How fast are we productive?

With your own data: CSV import of stops and vehicles usually under 10 minutes. Service contracts and depots set up in one morning — no consultant weeks.

What if the field team reaches stops without cellular coverage?

The driver app (iOS and Android) has a full offline mode: tours sit locally on the device, you capture status and (with the Operator plan) photos and forms even without signal — everything syncs automatically once you are back online. Basements, machine rooms and dead zones are not a blocker. For drivers without a smartphone, you export the daily route as a printed PDF tour list — stops, addresses, time windows, notes.

Integration

Trailo plans, your ERP invoices.

Dispatch, routes and — with the Operator plan — on-site documentation run in Trailo. Quotes, invoices, inventory and equipment history stay in your ERP or industry system. Connected via CSV/Excel import, native Pipedrive sync and Zapier with 7,000+ apps (all plans) plus the REST API (from Professional); HubSpot and other CRMs via Zapier.

Plan your first route in 5 minutes

14 days free. With your own jobs. No credit card. Cancel anytime.

Try for 14 days 15-min live demo