Shared transport

A run with room in the van is worth sharing. Shared transport is where you publish the space on your own runs, see the space your partners have published, and ask for it. Open it from Shared transport at the top of the Transports list. Anyone whose role can See Animals can read it; publishing, asking and answering need Change on Animals.

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Who sees what

Only the rescues you are linked with, and only what you publish. There is no list of the other organizations on the platform, by design: a partnership starts with an invitation to an email address you already have, under Settings → Partner rescues. A board of every rescue’s routes and dates would be that list by another name, so there is no board. That cuts both ways. Your published space reaches your partners and nobody else, and the way to reach more rescues is to link with more of them.

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Space you are offering

Offer space on a run publishes what is spare on one of your runs. Every rescue you are linked with is told on the bell when you publish, and again if you close it or change the details. Each offer shows what you published, what has been taken by the bookings you have accepted, and what is left. Close it stops anybody else asking without cancelling what is already agreed; Open it again puts it back.

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Keeping some of it, and closing the book

Two dates, and they answer different questions. Held until is about who may have a crate. A shelter offering transport usually needs some of the van for its own animals and does not know yet which ones. Hold those crates back and your partners are offered what is left; the day after Held until the hold ends and they become ordinary space, which is what “if it has not been taken up by a date it chooses, the space goes to whoever wants it” means. Your own card keeps saying what was held, so the number changing is never a mystery. Books close on is about when the arranging stops: paperwork bought, crates counted, drivers told. A transport on Friday the 26th might close its book on Wednesday the 24th. After that day nobody may ask, and everything already accepted stands. Both are optional. Three things are refused, each because it cannot mean anything:

• Holding back more crates than you are offering.
• A hold with no end date.
• A hold that ends after the book closes, or a book that closes after the run itself.

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When the run changes underneath

What your partners see is a copy of the run’s name, date and two ends, taken when you published. Your partners cannot read your records, so there is nothing else it could be. That copy can go out of date. Move the run to the following Saturday and the offer still says the third, so the offer tells you:

The run has changed since you published it. It now says Atlanta GA → Boston MA on 2026-10-10. Your partners still see Atlanta GA → Boston MA on 2026-10-03.

Publish the new details brings the offer up to date and tells everybody holding space on it. Until you do, your partners see what you published, which is the honest answer rather than a date that changed under a booking. If the run itself is deleted, the offer says so and asks you to cancel it.

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Answering an ask

An ask appears on the offer it is for: who asked, how many crates, which animals if they said, and any note.

• Yes, there is room holds the crates and tells them.
• Turn it down says no and tells them.
• The box beside the buttons is a word back, and it goes with either answer.

The fit is checked again at that moment, because two partners can both ask for the last large crate while both asks are unanswered. If the first ask takes it, accepting the second is refused and says what is left. Nothing is held until you say yes.

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What a seat costs

A transport does not have a price. A cat spay is a flat rate, a dog neuter changes with the sex and the size, a vaccine or a microchip is an add-on, and a run to a house rather than a vet is priced by the mile. So what you publish is a list of services, and the price of a seat is the sum of the lines whoever books picks for their animals. It is at What a seat costs, from the link at the top of Shared transport. A price that changes with the animal is written as several lines: a dog neuter at three sizes is three lines, each narrowed to one size. Nothing is worked out automatically from an animal record; the criteria decide which lines are offered for an animal, and a person picks. Stop offering it takes a line out of what partners see and keeps it on your own screen, under No longer offered: a price list that changed in July is a thing somebody looks up in October. Removing a line is safe too, because every booking keeps its own copy of what it was quoted.

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Picking the services when you ask

A partner’s offer carries their list. In Ask for space, What you are asking them to do adds a line at a time:

• The service, from their list, with what it costs.
• Who it is for: one of the animals you named, or The whole run for something that is not about one animal, which is what the mileage usually is.
• Miles, when the line is priced by the mile. A per-mile line with no miles is refused rather than quoted at nothing.

The running total is on screen before you press, and the lines and the sum appear on the ask itself - the same way on both sides, because the rescue driving is the one being paid and the rescue asking is the one paying. Paying is not built yet: what a booking comes to is recorded, and money changes hands however the two rescues already arrange it.

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Space your partners are offering

Each card is a partner’s published space, soonest first, with what is free of what they offered. Ask for space sends an ask: Under the card, each ask of yours says where it stands: Waiting for an answer, You have space, Turned down or Withdrawn, with the word they sent back. Withdraw takes back an ask nobody has answered; Give it back releases space you were given, and the rescue driving is told the crates are free again.

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Space you hold elsewhere

A partner can close an offer after you have space on it, and a closed offer is not shown to anybody. What you were given still stands, so it moves to Space you hold elsewhere with the journey it is on, and Give it back still works from there.

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Transport you are looking for

The other half of the same page: post what you need moved and every partner is told. Sorted closes a request that has been answered, by transport or otherwise. Withdraw takes it down. Either way it stops being shown to your partners.

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Transport your partners are looking for

What your partners have asked for, with one hint: You have published space in that window, naming your own offers whose date falls between their first and last day. That hint is dates only. Two rescues’ words for one road are not comparable, and a hint that pretended otherwise would send somebody to read a run that goes nowhere near.

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What arrives on the bell

Those notices are the same bell, and the same nightly email, as a partnership or a transfer.