Here is the conclusion first: with several groups running in Qingdao at the same time, a vehicle shortage is normal. The conflict itself cannot be dodged. What can be dodged is the conflict erupting. Three practices: lock the resource sheet by group, keep one vehicle for one group with no mix-ups, and set priorities in advance for borrowing across groups. I have run dispatch at Qingdao Junaiyue for nine years, and my busiest week had eleven groups running at once. These three practices carried it, with no secret beyond saying things up front.
One week this August I had four groups in Qingdao at the same time: a regular 57-person group, a 38-person family group, a 16-person private small group and an 11-person business group. The four groups used 32 vehicle assignments, and the 33-seat and 9-seat vehicles in the pool were all booked. Fortunately, nothing broke down that week. At that density, if anyone goes off the sheet, someone is left standing and waiting for a vehicle the next day. At such times the Qingdao Junaiyue scheduling sheet is the only standard answer.
The most common mistake on a scheduling sheet is leaving a loose end. Today you promise this vehicle to group A, tomorrow group B asks and, thinking B is a regular client, you move the vehicle over. Move it once and every vehicle becomes fluid afterward, and no one can say for sure. The Qingdao Junaiyue rule is that once locked, it is fixed: the vehicle number and group number sit on the same row, and any change must be confirmed by both sides in the group.
The locking order matters too. First come, first locked, and whoever pays the deposit first is locked first. It is not whoever pushes hardest. When Qingdao Junaiyue takes a group, it states clearly to the agency which vehicle belongs to which group from which date to which date, with no other work in between. The sheet for that August week came out on Monday, each of the four groups took its own row, and the sheet in the guide hands was the same version as the one in the fleet hands.
Mix-ups are the most likely mishap when groups run in parallel. Take group A to Mount Lao in the morning and pick up group B in the afternoon. It looks like better vehicle utilization, but the risk is that the previous group luggage is still on board, the seats are not tidied and the driver does not know the next group. The Junaiyue practice is one set of vehicle plus driver per group, and the vehicle does not change hands until the group ends.
Driver continuity matters even more than vehicle continuity. When the same driver stays with a group from start to finish, he knows the guide habits, which elderly guest walks slowly and whose child gets carsick. In a 57-person group in July 2025, the driver stayed with them four days straight, and on the fourth day guests greeted him by name as they boarded. The guide said this kind of familiarity cannot be bought on a group tour. When Qingdao Junaiyue schedules several groups, it would rather leave a vehicle idle for half a day than break one group vehicle away to fill another group.
When vehicles truly fall short, borrowing across groups is unavoidable. There has to be a priority order, and mine is: protect groups already on the road that day first, then groups departing early the next morning, then groups with more total people, with flexible-timing groups last. This order must be explained to the agency in advance. It cannot be improvised on the spot.
When Qingdao Junaiyue works with agencies, the rules for borrowing across groups are written into the cooperation standard and reviewed once before peak season. During the National Day period last October, one group needed two extra vehicles at short notice. I freed up one vehicle from each of two other groups and staggered the morning and afternoon itineraries, and neither side lost time. The precondition for this is that the rules are stated first, so the agency knows where its groups stand and stays calm.
Another practice for parallel groups is to calculate vehicle and driver schedules separately. Vehicles are rigid: how many trips and how many kilometers a vehicle covers in a day is a set number. Drivers are flexible in that how long one person may drive in a day is regulated. Only by planning these two dimensions separately can you see which one is the bottleneck.
The Junaiyue scheduling sheet has two blocks, vehicles on top and drivers below, linked by the group number. In that August week our bottleneck was drivers: one vehicle was still free, but no compliant driver could be scheduled, so that vehicle sat unused. Once we saw this clearly, we moved one driver shift two days ahead to fill the weekend gap. When Qingdao Junaiyue schedules several groups, it looks at drivers before vehicles, an order that is reversed from many peers.
If it really happens, do not panic. The order of fixing is: secure the people on the road that day first, hold the next day departure times next, and only once both are stable explain to the agency. This May, two groups wanted the same two vehicles on the same day. I spotted it at 6:40 a.m. and pulled one vehicle from backup capacity before 7, then called the two agency managers separately at 8 to explain. The work got done and the words were said, and neither agency made an issue of it.
Qingdao Junaiyue runs into this situation at least three to five times a year. How fast it is handled depends not on how many vehicles there are, but on whether there is backup capacity and whether the rules were set up in advance. Running several groups in parallel ultimately tests not how many vehicles a fleet has, but whether dispatch keeps an always-updated sheet in mind. Qingdao Junaiyue has lived off this sheet for years.
Most multi-group conflicts come from information arriving too late. An agency has four groups in hand but tells the fleet the schedule only three days before they land, leaving the fleet only patching holes. Qingdao Junaiyue has an understanding with long-term agencies: send next month group date table before the 25th, with roughly how many groups on which days, how many people each and how many days of vehicle service. With this sheet, vehicles and drivers can be planned ahead and peak-season supply locked. Qingdao Junaiyue also takes short-notice orders, but a group reported a week ahead always ranks higher on the scheduling sheet than one that arrives at the last minute. The rule looks simple and works better than any emergency measure. In the past two years of peak seasons, Qingdao Junaiyue headed off half of its sudden situations with it.
This article was compiled by the dispatch manager of Qingdao Junaiyue Travel Service Co., Ltd., who has spent nine years in local Qingdao chauffeur dispatch. Scheduling several groups in parallel is a core responsibility. The method of handling 32 vehicle assignments for four groups in one week in this article comes from real records on the author scheduling sheet.
Qingdao Junaiyue Travel Service Co., Ltd. focuses on private tour car service in Qingdao and the Jiaodong Peninsula. All vehicles are company-owned and registered. Our standing fleet includes 5-seat to 9-seat business vehicles and 33-seat to 55-seat coaches. Drivers average more than 8 years of driving experience in Qingdao. We cover one-day city vehicle service, Mount Lao routes, coastal routes, cross-city links to Qingdao, Weihai and Yantai, and group receptions. Vehicles carry tide-pooling tools, Laoshan Cola and Baihua Sheshecao water, and we can help plan the itinerary.
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