Work out how many trucks your dock can take in a day, how many doors your volume needs, and whether your busiest hour fits. Everything runs in your browser: no signup, nothing stored.
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Back-in to pull-out: the time a truck holds the door.
Leave slack for late trucks and slow unloads.
Planned capacity
48 trucks/day
8 trucks a day of headroom. 5 doors cover your volume.
Your peak hour needs more doors than you have, so trucks will queue even if the daily total fits. Spreading arrivals with appointment slots is usually cheaper than adding doors.
Example defaults: 6 doors open 1045-minute turns with a 1580% target utilization, 40day, and 20% of them in the busiest hour. Replace them with your own numbers; your appointment history is the best source.
The formula
Dock door capacity is the number of trucks a facility can load or unload in a given period. It depends on three things: how many doors you have, how long the dock is open, and how long each truck holds a door. A door that is open ten hours and turns a truck every hour can take ten trucks a day, as long as the trucks arrive when the door is free.
Start with the slot length: the average time a truck spends at the door (back in, load or unload, paperwork, pull out) plus any buffer you leave before the next truck. Divide the operating day by the slot length to get slots per door, rounding down because half a slot can't take a truck. Multiply by the number of doors for theoretical capacity. Then multiply by a target utilization below 100%, because late trucks, slow unloads, and unplanned arrivals will use the slack.
Turn the formula around. Multiply your daily truck count by the slot length to get the door-minutes you need. Divide by the usable minutes per door (operating minutes × target utilization) and round up. Run inbound and outbound separately if they use different doors, and size for a busy day, not an average one.
A dock can have plenty of daily capacity and still have trucks queueing at the gate, because arrivals bunch up at shift start or first thing in the morning. The peak-hour estimate uses Little's law: the number of doors busy at once is roughly the arrival rate times how long each truck holds a door. If that number is higher than your door count, the fix is usually not more doors but spreading arrivals across the day with appointment slots.
It treats every truck as the same average slot and assumes trucks arrive evenly within the peak hour. Real docks mix live loads and drop trailers, floor-loaded and palletized freight, and doors that only fit certain equipment. Labor, not doors, is often the real limit. Use the result to size the problem, then check it against your own arrival and departure times.
SimpleDock only offers carriers times that fit your doors, hours, and buffers. Free for one location.
Free for one location · No contract · No credit card
