Diesel Runway tells you how many days of diesel each site has, when the next tanker must be ordered, how it should be split between sites, and what it costs. This page explains where every number comes from.
Shifts run 06:00 to 06:00. A mining day is 06:00 to 06:00, not midnight to midnight, and the app's "today" follows it: at 02:00 it is still yesterday's night shift. Every tank and bowser is dipped twice:
Dips are entered in litres. Saving a dip for a date and shift that already has one replaces it, which is how a wrong reading is corrected. Every projection starts from the latest dip, so a fresh dip is what "rebases" the numbers.
Stock on site is the latest dip of every tank added up. Bulk tanks and bowsers are treated differently in the projection:
Each site has 44 000 L of bulk storage and a tanker is 40 000 L, so a full tanker rarely fits one site. That is why the app plans tankers across the complex rather than site by site.
Reserve is the bulk level you never want to plan below. It is set two ways per site, as litres and as days of burn at the default BCM, and the higher of the two applies.
Proposed and confirmed orders both count. When a site has trucks in the pipeline, its runway, status and colour describe where it stands with those trucks landed, and the order-by date is for the next truck after them. The card says "with pipeline orders" when that applies.
The app never looks further than 7 days ahead. Every chart, table, schedule and date stops at day 7, and a runway longer than that simply reads "7+ days". The projection walks forward day by day: start from the latest dip, subtract each day's burn, add any expected delivery on the day it lands. Each order says whether the tanker lands during the day shift or the night shift. A day-shift delivery counts from 06:00 and covers the whole day; a night-shift one lands at 18:00, after the day shift has burned its half. The tank never goes below empty: once it is dry the burn that could not happen is a shortfall, shown in the day-by-day table, and the next truck counts in full rather than paying off a debt. On the chart the line runs down to the moment the tank empties, then along the axis until a truck lands.
Orders cannot be placed on a Saturday or Sunday, because the people who place them are off. Trucks can still land on any day. So an order-by date that would fall on a weekend moves back to the Friday, and the landing date it protects stays where it was. On a Friday, expect to see several trucks marked "Order today": the ones for the weekend and for Monday and Tuesday's landings. Over the weekend itself nothing can be ordered, so anything due reads "Order Mon 21 Sep · orders closed today" rather than overdue, and the earliest a new truck can land is Monday plus the lead time.
Lead time is the days between placing an order and the tanker arriving. The safety buffer is extra days on top. Both are complex settings, the same for every site. Deliveries can land any day of the week.
Status colours follow the order-by date: green more than two days away, amber within two days, red today or overdue.
This section is for the diesel administrator and only shows when logged in. It suggests the trucks still needed over the next 7 days, on top of the orders already in the pipeline, so nothing is suggested twice. The supplier delivers whole trucks only, and a truck lands on one day and must offload completely that day.
Each suggested truck shows its landing day, its order-by date, the drop per site, the bulk level after, runway before and after, and cost at the planning price. The further out a suggestion is, the more it is a sketch: it assumes every earlier suggestion was ordered as drawn and that the plan and the burn hold.
Ordering happens only on the summary tab, and two people share the work. The diesel administrator lines orders up. The supplier administrator places them with the supplier. The supplier takes one order per truck, so an order is always one truck: a landing day and the litres for each site it drops at. A day that needs two trucks is two orders.
Every order moves through three stages:
When finance cannot fund every truck. Two tools, both for the diesel admin only.
Delivered orders leave the pipeline list as soon as they are marked received, so the panel only ever shows what is still open. Show delivered, last 30 days at the bottom of the panel brings them back, newest first, for checking or correcting a delivery note. They stay in storage for a year.
Delayed trucks. A confirmed order has a Delay button for when the supplier slips: a port delay, a breakdown. It asks only for the new landing date, the shift and a reason. Saving it moves the truck, and everything follows: the site projections and the complex chart, the briefing (which turns red if a site would now run dry before the truck lands), the review notes and the suggested trucks. The order shows "delayed" with the reason. If a landing date passes and nobody has touched the order, it gets a Review note asking to confirm the delivery or move the date.
Review notes. Dips come in twice a day and the picture moves. For every open order the app re-levels that one truck against the latest dips, holding every other order as it is. If the split has drifted by 5 000 L or more at any site, if a drop no longer fits its tank on the landing day, or if the landing date has passed, the order gets an amber Review note with the suggested split and an Apply split button. The truck's total never changes, only how it is shared. Applying one order's suggestion can nudge the suggestion for another truck landing the same day, so work down the list. Only admins see these notes.
Edit changes anything on an order at any stage: order-by date, landing date and shift, supplier, PO number, price, note, stage, and the litres per site. Proposed and confirmed orders both feed every site's projection on their landing day, so the tanker schedule only suggests what has not been lined up yet. Site tabs list their deliveries read-only with the same stage labels. The regular 06:00 and 18:00 dips carry on as normal; a post-delivery dip sits between them in time order.
At the very top is the Briefing: the whole complex in a few plain sentences, for someone who only needs the answer. The headline says whether any site runs dry in the next 7 days, counting proposed and confirmed orders. If a site would run dry before a truck on the way lands, or sooner than a new truck could land, the headline leads with that in red. Each site then gets one line: its runway on site today, what is on the way and when it lands (marked if only proposed), how far that covers it, and when the next truck needs ordering. A closing line counts the confirmed trucks on the way, the proposed ones waiting on the supplier, and when the next truck should be proposed. Timing is given to the shift, day or night, because that is as fine as the dips allow. Copy as text puts the briefing on the clipboard, ready for WhatsApp or email. The same briefing opens the printed order book.
Four tiles for the whole complex: diesel on site, daily burn, the shortest runway, and either the next order to propose (admins) or the next truck landing (everyone else). Then the complex bulk stock chart: total bulk diesel across all sites for the next 7 days. The solid line counts only trucks in the pipeline, proposed or confirmed, so it shows what happens if nothing more is lined up. The dashed line adds every truck the schedule suggests, ordered on time. The red line is the combined reserve and the dotted line the combined capacity; triangles mark truck landings, filled for orders in the pipeline and hollow for suggested ones. Hover for any day's totals and the split by site. Then, for admins only, the suggested trucks. Then the orders in the pipeline, a card per site, and for admins only an action list sorted by date and, at the bottom, the complex settings: complex name, planning price, tanker size, lead time, safety buffer, and the names of the approver and the finance contact used in the group message. These apply to every site.
The Order book button on the summary opens a printable page for the supplier administrator and for finance. It shows only orders that someone entered in the pipeline and that have not been delivered yet. The tanker schedule's suggestions do not appear.
Each order uses its own price per litre. Print gives a light layout.
Message for the group. At the top of the order book is a ready-made message for the morning WhatsApp to the 3.1, the supplier admin and finance. It gives the situation in one line, a line per site (litres in bulk, days on site, next truck), and then the orders in three groups. Confirmed, already ordered: landing day, litres per site, supplier, PO number and cost. For approval now: the proposed orders whose order-by date is today or the next ordering day, in full with supplier and cost, and the total to approve. Coming up, no action yet: the later proposed orders in one short line each (landing day, order-by date, supplier, approximate cost) with an indicative total that is kept out of the amount to approve. It closes by asking the approver, by name, to approve the orders under "For approval now", and tells finance, by name, the cash that flows out if they are. The two names are in the complex settings. Copy message puts it on the clipboard; the starred lines come out bold in WhatsApp. It is rebuilt from the live numbers every time the page opens, so do the morning's admin first: enter dips, adjust and propose orders, then copy. The panel is not printed, so the printed order book goes along with it as the detail.
Anyone can type into the mining plan on a site tab without logging in. Everything recalculates on screen, including the tanker schedule, but nothing is saved. A "What-if" chip appears with a "Back to saved plan" button, and reloading the page also drops the scenario. Only an admin's plan edits are written to the database.
There are three kinds of user. Two of them log in with the Log in button, top right, and each has its own password. Whichever password you type decides which you are, and the header says so.
| No login: view only | Supplier admin | Diesel admin |
|---|---|---|
| The briefing, the complex chart, the orders in the pipeline, the site cards and site tabs, the order book and printing. Can try a what-if on the mining plan, which is never saved. | Everything a viewer sees, plus the supplier side of orders in the pipeline: Confirm order (supplier, PO number, price, landing date and shift), Supplier details on a confirmed order, and Delay. Cannot change the litres per site, create or delete orders, mark a truck received, enter dips, or touch any setting. | Everything: dips, proposing, editing, receiving and deleting orders, the suggested trucks and review notes, the action list, burn rates, site and complex settings, tanks, sites, and both passwords. |
The server checks the role on every save, so the supplier login cannot change anything outside its lane even by other means. Orders record who acted: "confirmed by supplier admin 20 Sep". A login lasts 30 days from its last use, on that device, even if the browser is closed. The diesel admin changes either password from Passwords in the header; changing one signs out everyone using it.
The server is up but the app's backend could not answer, so the page shows nothing rather than numbers that would be wrong. Nothing on the server is lost: the data is only unreachable. The page tries again every 15 seconds and comes back on its own; Try again does it now. Do not enter dips or orders in the meantime.