01One: the count is not the count

A passenger booking asks how many bags. A crew booking has to ask three questions instead.

• How many cases. The number itself, honestly, including the one somebody will bring at the last moment.
• What shape. A case that lies flat and a case that must stand upright occupy completely different volumes of the same vehicle.
• How heavy. Not for the vehicle, which does not care, but for the load time and for whether one driver can reasonably help.

Fourteen cases with four people is a sprinter van. Fourteen suitcases with fourteen people is also a sprinter van, but only for the people, and the cases are a second vehicle. The same number produces two different bookings.

02Two: load time is real and it is longer than you think

Cases go in one at a time. They come out one at a time. Fifteen minutes at the kerb is normal for a full van and it is not the driver being slow, it is what stacking a load properly takes.

We build that into the pickup time rather than discovering it on the day, which is the single most useful thing this desk does for a unit. If the sum on the timing piece allows ten minutes for load, a crew run needs twenty five and sometimes more.

03Three: the pavement is part of the plan

New York kerbs are not a neutral surface. A loading zone that is free at ten in the morning is not free at four in the afternoon, and a building with a service entrance is worth more to a crew run than an address on the front.

Tell us where the vehicle can actually stop. If there is a service door, a bay, a corner that works better than the front of the building, put it in the notes on the booking form. The driver arriving at the right side of a building saves more time than any amount of route planning.

04Four: nobody signs for the value

This one comes up on about a third of crew bookings and it is worth being blunt about.

Operators carry the cover that applies to their vehicle and their work. That is not equipment insurance and it never has been. Whatever is in those cases stays covered by whoever owns it, under whatever policy already covers it in a building, on a set and in an aircraft hold.

If the value of the load matters, it belongs in your own policy. A car service that told you otherwise would be telling you something that would not survive the first claim.

05How to write the booking

1. 1. Passengers and cases as two separate numbers.
2. 2. The cases that will not lie flat, named.
3. 3. The address the vehicle can actually stop at, and the door.
4. 4. Who the driver calls on the day, which on a crew run is rarely the person booking.
5. 5. The flight number for an arrival, so a late landing keeps one van rather than becoming three taxis.
6. 6. Whether the gear and the people must arrive together, or whether one goes first.

Six lines. It takes two minutes to write and it removes most of what goes wrong.

06Two vehicles, arranged calmly

Splitting is normal here. Two vans for eleven people and twenty cases. A van for the freight and an SUV for the two people who have to be somewhere first. Both quoted individually, both confirmed as one reservation so there is a single thread to answer.

If the two should arrive together, say so and the pickup times are set to make that happen. If the gear should land first, say that instead, and we will separate them deliberately rather than leaving it to traffic.

07Notice, and the honest answer

Sprinter vans are the thinnest class on the road at any hour of any day. A weekday evening in a busy month is exactly when everybody wants one.

Twenty four hours is comfortable. The same week is usually fine. The same day is a telephone call and a straight answer, and sometimes that answer is no. We would rather tell you at ten in the morning that a four o'clock van is not there than accept it and leave a unit standing on a pavement with the load out.

08Book a crew run

Put the case count in the notes field of the booking form and we will quote a class that fits. For anything with more than one vehicle in it, call +1 (646) 559-3082 and speak to a specialist instead, because a two vehicle brief is a conversation rather than a form. Monday to Friday 6:30 am to 8:30 pm, Saturday 8:00 am to 4:00 pm, Eastern Time.