Give each vehicle a fixed start direction

Why you might want this

By default, Snowmass fans your fleet out automatically: on the first move from the yard, each machine heads toward the emptiest direction so coverage starts wide. Nothing to set up.

But some fleets want the same equipment covering the same part of town every storm — "Tractor 01 always takes the north end." That's what start directions are for. It's a familiarity and predictability choice, not a routing one — the swarm still assigns every stop after the first.

Nothing to switch on

There's no setting to flip. Open Fleet → Start directions, pick the service plan you're arranging, give a vehicle a heading, and it uses it the next time it deploys on that service. Leave a vehicle's heading blank and it falls back to the automatic spread. Headings are per vehicle and per service plan — the same vehicle can head north to plow and east to salt — so set a direction to use it, clear it to go back to automatic.

Arrange the dial

The dial shows one wedge per active vehicle that runs the selected service, coloured to match the vehicle.

• Switch service plan at the top — each plan has its own dial and its own headings. The little 3/4 on a plan's pill shows how many of that fleet's vehicles already have a heading set, so you can see at a glance which fleets are still on the automatic spread.
• Drag a wedge around the compass to set that vehicle's heading, or type a bearing (0–359°) in the list beside it. They stay in sync.
• Redistribute evenly spaces everyone out while keeping each vehicle near its current direction — so adding a vehicle nudges the others over a little instead of reshuffling the whole fleet.
• Balance by workload sizes the wedges so each vehicle gets roughly the same number of properties with active jobs — aim your vehicles at where the work actually is.
• Also apply these headings to every other service (the checkbox by Save) copies each vehicle's heading to the other plans it runs — handy when a vehicle always heads the same way whatever it's doing.
• Leave a vehicle blank and it falls back to the automatic spread.
• Save directions when you're done.

The number beside each vehicle is how many properties with active jobs on this service sit in its direction right now — so you can tell whether a heading is worth it or just points at empty streets. (It needs a depot on the location to measure from.)

Multiple yards? Pick the location at the top — each yard has its own dial.

See where the work is

Every property with an active job on this service shows on the dial as a dot, placed in its real direction from the yard (nearer the middle = closer in). Point a vehicle and the properties it will cover light up in its colour — you're aiming at real work, not a guess. If a busy direction has no vehicle pointed at it, Snowmass says so in a note right under the dial.

Hit Print storm plan (top right) for a clean one-page sheet — the dial, each vehicle's heading, and how many properties sit in each direction — to hand a crew or show a client. It prints in light mode even if you work in dark.

How a bearing steers a vehicle

A bearing is the direction the vehicle heads as it leaves the yard. When it deploys, the swarm looks at every open property, works out the compass direction from the yard to each one, and sends the vehicle to the best-aligned property first. After that first stop, normal dispatch takes over, so the vehicle naturally keeps working that side.

It's a nudge, never a fence: if there's no work in a vehicle's direction today, it simply takes the closest-aligned stop instead — it's never left waiting. Changes apply the next time the vehicle deploys from the yard, not mid-run.