Planning regular mowing and garden rounds with AI

A chat tool can sort a list. It can't drive your streets. That one fact decides how you use it for rounds.

Give it your regular customers by area and visit length, and it will happily group them into days. Whether that grouping is sensible on the road is for you to judge.

Routing is a problem of its own

Working out the order in which several vehicles visit many stops is called the vehicle routing problem. It generalises the travelling salesman problem, where one route has to visit every location.¹ Software that solves it for real fleets tends to use shortcuts called heuristics, because of the size and frequency of real-world problems.¹

You don't need the maths. The point is that routing is its own job. A general chat tool is built to produce text, and it can produce a tidy-looking timetable that has you crossing town three times.

Use a mapping app to check drive times. Use the chat tool for the sorting and the words.

What to give it

Keep the list plain and free of private details. Use short codes, not names and addresses:

• A code for each regular job (A, B, C)
• The suburb or area
• How long the visit usually takes
• The fortnightly or weekly rhythm
• Any fixed constraint, like "gate locked until nine" or "owner wants mornings"

Then ask:

Group these visits into a Monday to Friday plan. Keep each day to one or two areas. Don't change any visit length. List any visit you couldn't fit.

The last sentence matters. A tool that's pushed to fit everything may quietly drop a visit or shorten one. These tools can give an answer containing false information presented as fact.² Count the visits in the plan against your original list before you trust it.

Check it like a driver

Put the first day's stops into a map and look at the order. Ask yourself:

• Does the day double back on itself?
• Is the first stop close to where the gear is kept?
• Are there gaps where you'd be sitting in the ute?
• Does any day hold more than one crew can do?

Move things by hand. The draft is a starting point, nothing more.

Plan for wet days

Rain delays are the part that wrecks a round. Plan for them before the week starts, not on the morning.

Ask the tool for a simple rule you can adopt. For example: "If Monday is called off, those visits slide to the next free day in the same area." Keep Friday light for catch-ups. You decide whether that suits you. You'll still need to tell customers, and the messages page covers the wording.

A word on forecasts. A "chance of rain" figure means the likelihood of precipitation falling in a particular area over a defined period of time.³ It means nothing without that time period, so check which window the forecast covers before you cancel a morning.³ Different countries' weather services define the figure in their own ways, so read how yours does.

Let the tool turn your rule into a short, written wet-weather policy for your fact sheet. Then use that policy every time, so customers hear the same thing.

Keep your own calendar as the truth

Whatever the tool produces, copy the final plan into your real calendar or scheduling app. The chat window isn't a record. If you change a visit later, change it there first, then ask the tool for fresh wording if you need it.