Head to head

It decides what goes on the truck. We decide where it sits.

PTV comes at freight from logistics optimisation rather than from maps, and the tour planning is a serious piece of work. It stops at the trailer door.

PTV Group
13 capabilities
Public documentation, August 2026

Who it is for

Planners optimising a whole day of work, not a single trip.

If your question is which of eight vehicles takes which of forty drops and in what order, this is the category leader's category.

Tour optimisation is a much harder problem than it looks. It balances customer time windows, driver hours, vehicle capacity, cost and tolls. It also uses a road network that treats a truck differently from a van. PTV does all of that across a fleet before the day starts, and its experience shows.

On top of that sits truck attribute routing, toll calculation, transport cost calculation and arrival time forecasting, with road coverage across Europe that reflects decades of work. For a continental operation, that local depth is not a detail.

The result is a plan that says this vehicle, these stops, this order, this arrival time, this cost. Every one of those is a decision worth money, and none of them is a decision about where the pallets go.

The optimiser decides what goes on the truck. Nothing in it decides where on the deck any of it lands.

Two layers, not two products

The optimiser works at the level of vehicles and stops. The axle question works at the level of items and inches. They sit on top of each other rather than beside each other.

The job it was not built for

Capacity is not the same as distribution.

An optimiser knows a trailer can take this much weight and this much volume. That is a constraint, not a layout.

Capacity is a ceiling

The optimiser checks that the freight fits within the vehicle's limits. It does not decide, or need to decide, whereabouts on the deck each item ends up, which is the only thing that determines the axle split.

The sequence changes the physics

Drop order is chosen for distance and time windows. It also decides what remains on the trailer after each stop, and therefore what each axle group carries on every leg after the first.

Legal is not a cost function

An optimiser minimises a cost. Statutory axle limits are not a cost to be traded off, they are a hard boundary with a citation on the other side of it.

One worked tour, on the drive tandem

A worked example. Nothing was added at any stop. The heaviest pallets were nearest the doors, so the first drop moved the balance forward and put the drive tandem 700 lb over between two deliveries that were both on time.

The drop order is a physics decision too

A sequence chosen for distance and time windows also decides what stays on the trailer after every stop. Reverse those four drops and the same freight on the same road never crosses the line.

Side by side

Thirteen capabilities, and six rows where we are the no.

Optimisation, tolls, transport cost, navigation and European coverage all belong to the other column.

The whole routing category

AxleGuard compared with PTV Group across thirteen capabilities
Capability	AxleGuard	PTV Group
Truck attribute routing with real dimensions	Yes	Yes
Multi-stop tour optimisation across a fleet	No	Yes
Arrival time forecasting and scheduling	part	Yes
Toll cost calculation along the route	No	Yes
Transport cost calculation per trip	No	Yes
Truck navigation for the cab	No	Yes
Deep road coverage across Europe	part	Yes
Axle weights solved from where the freight sits	Yes	No
Bridge formula on every consecutive axle group	Yes	No
Tire and axle-rating limits layered on statute	Yes	No
Corrective move in slider holes and inches	Yes	No
Verdict recomputed per leg as freight comes off	Yes	No
Permit pathway when no legal position exists	Yes	n/p

supportedpart partly, or with limits not supportedn/p not published by the vendor

Methodology

Drawn from publicly published product documentation as of August 2026. Where the vendor has not published a capability the cell reads not published rather than no. PTV publishes several distinct products and packaging changes — verify with the vendor.

When to pick them instead

Four situations where PTV is the answer.

Your hard problem is sequencing. Many vehicles, many stops, time windows and a cost function to minimise — that is PTV's home ground and it is a serious piece of engineering.
You need transport cost and toll cost calculated as part of planning, not after it.
Your operation is European, or crosses Europe. Depth of coverage and local rule knowledge there is a real differentiator.
You need arrival time forecasting your customers will be held to.

Working together

One level above, one level below.

01
The optimiser decides which vehicle takes what
Sequencing forty drops across eight vehicles is a genuinely hard problem and it belongs where it already is. Nothing here competes with that.
02
Each resulting load is solved axle by axle
Once the optimiser has decided this trailer carries these stops, the physical question begins: where does that freight have to sit for every axle group to come back legal.
03
The drop order changes the answer
A tour with four stops is four different loads. The axle verdict is recomputed for each leg, so a sequence that is legal at the first drop and illegal at the third is caught before it is dispatched.
04
The plan goes back with the verdict attached
Legal, over, or permit required, on every leg of the tour, with the binding rule named rather than a bare refusal.

The category, the matrix and the neighbours.

Take one tour off the optimiser and open the trailer.

Four stops, real freight, real trailer. We will solve the axles on every leg and show you which drop order stays legal all the way to the last one.

Bring one lane Open AxleGuard