Cheapest fleet
Let Calculate choose the cheapest mix of containers or trucks. How to price your equipment, set the currency, and read the total cost.
By default, Calculate uses as few Units as it can. If you pay per container or per truck, the fewest Units are not always the cheapest: one 20 ft container can cost less than a 40 ft one for a small load. Cheapest fleet asks Calculate for the lowest total cost instead.
How Calculate decides
A Load Plan has an objective. Whichever you choose, Calculate never leaves cargo Unloaded to save money.
| Objective | Calculate picks |
|---|---|
| Fewest Units (default) | The fewest Units, as before. |
| Cheapest fleet | The lowest total cost first, then the fewest Units among ties. |
Cost is a price per Unit: what one container or truck of that Equipment Type costs you. Cargo Marshal adds it up over the Units the plan uses. It is not a rate table: there are no lanes, distances, surcharges, or quotes.
Set the currency
An organization has one currency for all its prices. An owner or admin sets it under Settings → Organization, in the Profile section, under Currency. The default is EUR.
Changing the currency relabels your prices. It never converts them, so a price of 1,800.00 stays 1,800.00 in the new currency. Check your prices after you change it.
Price your equipment
- Open the Equipment Library and create or edit an Equipment Type.
- Enter the Price per Unit in the organization’s currency. Leave it empty if you do not want to price the type.
The built-in Sea and Road types belong to every organization, so they come without a price. To price one, duplicate it into your own library, or set a price for it on a single Load Plan (see below).
Choose Cheapest fleet for a plan
- Open the Load Plan and choose the equipment button (the sliders icon next to the equipment).
- Under Optimize for, choose Cheapest fleet.
- Calculate. The result shows the total cost and the cost of each Unit.
Cheapest fleet needs a price on every Equipment Type of the plan. If a type has none, the option stays off and the dialog names the types that are missing a price. Under Adjust for this plan, give each of them a price, or choose other equipment. A price set there applies to this Load Plan only.
If a Cheapest fleet plan later loses a price, for example because you remove one under Adjust for this plan, Calculate pauses with a message until every type is priced or you switch the plan back to Fewest Units. Cargo Marshal does not quietly fall back to Fewest Units.
Prices and Stale plans
A Load Plan keeps a copy of each price, like every other equipment value. Editing a price in the library never reprices a plan that already exists. Use Reset to library under Adjust for this plan to take the library price again.
- Changing the objective makes a calculated plan Stale. Calculate again to apply it.
- Changing a price makes a plan Stale only when it uses Cheapest fleet, because only then did the price shape the result. A Fewest Units plan stays current.
Compare the two
The total cost is shown for any calculated plan whose Units are all priced. To see what the cheapest fleet saves, make two Load Plans on the same Project, one with Fewest Units and one with Cheapest fleet, and compare the totals. A Fewest Units plan shows the cost at the plan’s current prices.
Who sees prices
Prices stay inside your organization. A Share Link shows neither prices nor the objective, and a project file leaves them out as well, so an imported plan starts as a Fewest Units plan. The public API returns the price, the currency, and the objective to your own API keys.