Larnup
Driver Guide / Running a Trip

Running a Trip

3 min readDriver Guide
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Purpose

Running a trip is the core job of the Driver app. Everything happens through one continuous workflow: you start the trip, the app tracks your live location automatically the whole time, you mark students as they board and get dropped, and you end the trip when the route is complete. There are no separate screens for pickup, drop, pause, or resume — they're all actions on the same live trip banner that stays on screen for as long as your trip is active.

When to Use

  • At the scheduled start time for your morning pickup or afternoon drop route.
  • Any time you need to stop briefly during a trip — fuel, traffic, a mechanical check — without ending it.
  • When you're ready to continue after a pause.
  • When the last student has been dropped and the route is finished.

How to Use

  1. Open the app and go to the Home or Route tab. Confirm you have the correct route loaded for this trip.

  2. Tap Start Trip. This begins the trip and immediately starts sharing your live location — you don't need to turn tracking on separately. See Live Tracking for what this looks like from your side.

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    The live trip banner right after starting a trip, showing trip status and a Start/Pause/End control set.

  3. Once the trip is running, the live trip banner stays visible at the top of the app no matter which tab you're on. This is your main control point for the rest of the trip.

  4. As you reach each stop, mark students boarded (pickup) or dropped (drop route) directly from the banner or the Route screen — this is covered in detail in Student Boarding.

  5. If you need to stop for a reason unrelated to a scheduled stop — refueling, waiting out heavy traffic, a quick mechanical check — tap Pause on the trip banner. This does not end the trip; it just marks the trip as paused so the school and parents know you're temporarily stationary.

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    The trip banner in Paused state, with a Resume control visible.

  6. When you're ready to continue, tap Resume. The trip picks up where it left off, live tracking continues, and boarding/drop actions become available again.

  7. If something goes wrong during the trip — a breakdown, an accident, or a student issue — don't just pause and wait. File it right away using Incident Report, then continue handling the trip as the situation allows.

  8. Once every stop on the route has been completed and the last student is dropped, tap End Trip. This closes out the trip, stops live location sharing, and moves the trip status to Completed on your Dashboard.

  9. After ending, double-check the Dashboard shows Completed for that route before putting the app away — this confirms the school and parents received the final update.

TipStart the trip from the app at the actual moment you pull away, not before. Starting early means parents see a live trip that hasn't actually begun moving yet, which causes confused pickup timing questions.
TipUse Pause for genuine stops, not for every red light or short slowdown — pausing too often makes the live trip look stalled to parents watching the map.
Common MistakeNever end a trip early because you think the remaining stops will be skipped or handled another way. Ending the trip stops location sharing for everyone still waiting on it — pause instead if you need to stop, and only end once the route is genuinely finished.
Common MistakeIf the app loses signal mid-trip, keep driving your route as normal — don't restart the trip. Tracking will catch up once signal returns. Restarting can create a duplicate trip record for the same route.