Shift Bidding Software for Transportation
Reduce union grievances, save hours, and make everything auditable. Used by ground transportation, public transit, automotive logistics, and airport ground services teams across North America.
Union
Agreement compliance
US-based
Sales, support & dev
$500
starting per year
The current problem with bidding
Chaos of paper bids
Someone on your team spends hours chasing down drivers. Another person collects replies, resolves conflicts in a spreadsheet, and tries to keep everything straight. By the time it's done, half a day or more is gone, and you're not 100% sure you got it all right.
Union grievance risk
When a bid runs on paper or email, there's no record. No timestamp. No proof of who saw what or when. Union members know it, and they will use it. A disputed bid costs time, money, morale, and puts management's credibility into question.
Qualification problems
Manual bids don't check whether a driver holds the right certifications before they make a selection. If CDL class, route qualification, and special needs certifications aren't enforced automatically, it falls on your staff to catch it, usually after the fact. Not a good plan!
ShiftBID was built to help companies deal with these issues
Features for Transportation
Qualification Gating
You can assign qualifications to positions (CDL class, route certification, or any other grouping you define). When a driver opens the bid, they only see shifts they're qualified to take. No manual checking. No post-bid corrections. Eligibility is enforced automatically, before selections are made.
Seniority-based Ordering
ShiftBID establishes bidding order by hire date automatically. Same-day ties are broken by employee number. If your contract requires a different order, you can set it manually or configure a custom group sort. The system follows whatever seniority logic your operation requires, and applies it consistently, every time.
Auto Pre-bid
Before the bid opens, employees can rank their preferred positions in order. When their turn comes in the live bid, ShiftBID automatically awards them the highest-ranked option still available. Immediately, it becomes the next person's turn to choose.
Shift Filters
Instead of scrolling through a wall of options, drivers can filter by start time, days off, activities, and eligibility. A driver who needs Wednesdays off can surface only those positions in seconds. Faster decisions, fewer mistakes, and happier employees.
Full Audit Trail
ShiftBID records who participated, when they bid, what they selected, and what options they ranked. If a driver claims they didn't have access or questions how a result was determined, the answer is in the system. Transparent to management and defensible to the union.
Multi-Location, One Price
Multi-location operators get a separate tenant URL for each site. Each yard, station, or terminal runs its own bid independently, without employees from other locations showing up in the list. No additional cost per location. Pricing starts at $500 per year for 50 employees.
Case Study
Featured Customer Story: Illinois School District
An Illinois School District was running its annual bus route bid manually, coordinating dozens of drivers across multiple routes. ShiftBID automated seniority ordering, simplified the selection process for drivers, and delivered published results without the administrative back-and-forth.
Testimonial
"We are a public school district with around 200 Drivers and Monitors. Bidding for routes 3-4 times a year has always been a time-consuming process. We have tried several methods to streamline this over the years without spending loads of time or money and never quite got where we wanted. ShiftBID has been our answer to all our bidding needs..."
Mike B. Peoria, IL
How it works
Step 1 — Build your bid. Import your employee list, set seniority order, assign qualifications to groups, and define which positions require which qualifications. Configure your bid window and select a bid mode.
Step 2 — Start the bid. Every eligible employee receives a text and email notification that the bid is open. They log in from any browser (desktop, tablet, or phone) and rank their preferred positions using the filter tools, and submit. No app download required.
Step 3 — Results are finalized. When the bid closes, results are calculated automatically based on seniority and selections. Administrators can review results, make manual overrides for any edge cases, and recalculate before publishing. Once you click Make Live, every employee sees their assigned position.
Step 4 — Export to your scheduling system. Export results as a CSV or use our custom export options to feed your dispatch or scheduling system directly. The position, assigned employee, shift definition, and rotation pattern are all included.
Benefits
Ranked Bid: (recommended for most transportation operations) Everyone bids at the same time over a set window, typically 24 to 72 hours. Each employee ranks all positions they'd want in order of preference. When the window closes, the system assigns positions from the top of the seniority list down. Employees can bid on their own schedule, no need to be online at a specific moment.
Sprint Bid: One employee at a time, but the clock for the next person starts as soon as the current person submits, not when their time window expires. Works well for faster bids where employees are on standby. Pairs with pre-bid for employees who want to submit their rankings in advance and let the system handle their turn automatically.
Standard Bid: One employee at a time with a fixed window per person, typically 24 or 48 hours. The most structured, fully sequential option. Best for organizations where bid protocol is explicitly defined in the CBA.
FAQs
$500 per year
up to 50 employees bidding
+$10/year per additional employee