> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.loadmate.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# The pre-trip checklist
> loadmate's pre-trip checklist flags the readiness items for one trip - tyre age, service timing, load changes - so you clear them before you hitch up.
The pre-trip checklist is a quiet readiness review for one planned trip. It looks at the rig you are taking and the dates you are travelling, then shows the things worth your attention before you leave — in two groups. First, anything the app has **found** for these dates: a service falling due, a tyre ageing out, a load that changed since your last weigh-in. Below that, **your own pre-trip checks**: the walk-around jobs you choose to do before every tow, ready to tick off one by one.
It is not a score, and it is not a nag. It is a second pair of eyes on the numbers you have already entered, plus a home for the routine you already do at the drawbar — so you can clear one short list before you hitch up.
The checklist can only see saved data for the first group. Your eyes still own the physical check — which is exactly what the second group is for.
## Open trip readiness
Readiness lives on the planned trip itself, not on a separate screen. To find it:
Tap **Trips** in the main navigation. Your planned trips are listed with their dates and a short countdown.
Tap the trip to open its detail. You will see the route, the countdown to departure, the estimated distance, the rig you have selected, and the readiness section for that trip.
Scroll to the readiness area. It shows either a short list of outstanding items or an all-clear state, depending on how close you are to leaving and what loadmate can see.
### Why the list grows as departure nears
The checklist becomes live as departure approaches. About two weeks before you leave, loadmate starts re-checking the trip. It combines what is already on your Rig with items it expects to matter by your travel dates. The outstanding items then begin to appear.
A trip more than about two weeks out shows the countdown instead of a live list. That far ahead there is nothing useful to act on. Tyres have not aged, services are not yet due, and loads have not drifted in a way you can fix today. As the dates get closer, the items the trip cares about appear, so you have time to act.
Anything with a due date that lands **between today and your departure day** shows up as "due before you leave", so a service booked-in window or a task deadline never hides in the gap between now and the trip itself. Work that falls due mid-trip appears too, using the trip's dates and expected distance.
The checklist is trip-aware, but it is not cut off from the rest of your rig. It can include trip-window checks **and** selected current rig findings that matter before departure, such as tyres, service timing, warranty timing, or a load that has changed since your last weigh-in. The Rig tab remains the main home for your full attention feed; the checklist is the slice that matters for *this* trip.
## Review the two groups
The readiness section is split into two labelled groups, because they are two different kinds of work:
**Needs attention before you go** lists what the app has found for these dates — service or task timing, tyre age, warranty expiry, a stale odometer, a load that changed since your last weigh-in. These are exceptions: on a well-kept rig this group is often just a single green line reading "Nothing due before this trip."
**Your pre-trip checks** lists the walk-around jobs you have chosen to do before every tow — coupling secured, chains crossed, breakaway connected, lights working, and whatever else you add. This group belongs to you: it shows a simple "2 of 8 done" style label and comes back fresh for every trip. If you have not set any up yet, the card here offers to start you off — see [Set up your pre-trip checks](/pre-trip/set-up-your-checks).
Away from the trip itself, the strips on the Trips list and the Rig page show a plain count of what is still pending, such as "3 pre-trip checks pending", and turn into a green "No outstanding checks" strip once you are clear.
Readiness is **checklist-derived, not a second score**. It tells you whether anything needs attention before this trip. It does not try to grade your readiness out of 100. Your Rig Score is shown separately and measures something different: the safety of the rig itself.
## Tick items off
Every row has a round tick control on the left. One tap marks it done **for this trip**; tap again to undo. Ticked rows stay visible, greyed and struck through, and sink to the bottom of their group so what is left stays at the top. Your ticks are saved with the trip, so they are still there if you close the app or pick the trip up on another device.
Your pre-trip checks reset for every trip — ticking "Coupling secured" today does not tick it for next month's trip, because you will check it again then. That is the point of a routine.
Ticking an item here does **not** update your maintenance records. If you actually completed a service or finished a task, use the row's **View** or **Log service** action to record it properly — that clears it everywhere, permanently, and keeps your service history accurate. The tick is for "handled for this trip", nothing more.
As you tick, the trip's pending count comes down everywhere at once — the checklist, the Trips list strip, and the Rig page trip card all read the same tally.
Opening a planned trip and reading its readiness checklist is free, so you can always see the shape of the list. Creating, editing, starting, cancelling, or deleting a trip, and logging a fuel stop, are saved actions that need active Pro. Demo trips show the full checklist and let you try ticking, but demo ticks are not saved — they reset when you leave.
## What can appear
The checklist draws from a few sources, each owned by the matching part of the app. It favours the things that matter before *this* departure. It pulls in current rig findings only when they are relevant to the trip. Below is what you might see, and why each one earns a place on the list.
When a trip is departing soon and you have changed what you are carrying since your last weigh-in that included loads, the checklist flags it. Packing for a trip is exactly when your weight estimates drift away from your last measured reading. A full water tank here, a generator left behind there. This item points you back to the changed loads so you can review them. For how moves and fills are compared against your baseline, see [Review load changes](/loads/load-changes).
If a service or a maintenance task is already overdue, falls due **before you leave**, or falls due across your travel dates, it appears here. loadmate checks the due date against today through to your trip end, and the due odometer against the trip's expected distance. That way, work due in the run-up or mid-trip shows up while you can still act on it, instead of catching you halfway there. The tow vehicle is always checked. The trailer is checked when it is hitched.
The recurring walk-around checks you have set up — from the common list or written yourself — appear on every trip's checklist as their own group. They carry no due dates and never go overdue; they are simply there to be ticked off before each tow. To add, remove, or change them, see [Set up your pre-trip checks](/pre-trip/set-up-your-checks).
Tyres age by date, not just by tread. If a tyre would cross its regional age warning or critical threshold by the end of the trip, the checklist looks ahead and flags it. Missing tyre details the rig needs, such as size, load rating, manufacturing date, or an installed date from a tyre-change record, also appear here. That way you can complete the profile before departure, rather than guess on the road.
If your tow vehicle's odometer reading is 30 or more days old when distance-based planning matters for the trip, the checklist shows a gentle reminder to update it. A current reading keeps the service and task timing accurate. Those countdowns depend on knowing where the odometer actually sits today. For how loadmate estimates between updates and when this reminder appears, see [Odometer reminders and estimates](/maintenance/odometer-reminders).
If a warranty coverage date is set to expire between your trip start and trip end, the checklist flags it. You can then act before cover lapses partway through the trip, by logging any issue or planning around it.
The checklist does **not** print a single recommended tyre pressure for every rig. Cold pressure depends on your own tyres, your load, and the manufacturer or placard guidance for your setup. So pressure is handled on the tyre screens, not as a one-size pre-trip number. See [Pressure and load](/tyres/pressure-and-load).
## Act on an item
Every app-found item is a way in, not a dead end. Its **View** and **Log** actions take you to the screen where the fix actually lives, so real work gets recorded properly instead of only ticked for the trip.
* A **service** item opens the service record. Where it is available, a service row also offers a direct "Log service" shortcut.
* A **tyre** item opens the tyre profile so you can add the missing detail or review the age.
* A **load-change** item opens your changed loads so you can review what moved since the last weigh-in.
* A **warranty** or **odometer** item opens the screen that owns that data.
Make the change on that screen, then come back to the trip. The next time you read the readiness section, the item you handled has dropped off and the count is lower.
A clear checklist means only that loadmate has no visible readiness items for this trip **from the data it can see**. It is not a guarantee that the rig is safe to tow. Always finish with the ordinary walk-around and source checks you would do before any tow.
## Clear or set aside an item
There are three ways an item leaves the outstanding tally, and they mean different things:
* **Fix it at the source.** Log the service, complete the task, update the tyre detail. The item drops off everywhere, permanently, because the underlying issue is gone.
* **Tick it off.** Marks it handled for this trip only. Ticked rows dim and sink; your records are untouched.
* **Dismiss it.** For app-found items that do not really apply to this trip, a **Dismiss** control clears the row from readiness counts. Some safety-critical items cannot be dismissed, so the control will not be there for them. Dismissing is not a service record either — if the underlying issue is still real, it stays in your full attention feed on the Rig tab.
Your own pre-trip checks are tick-only — there is nothing to dismiss, because you put them there yourself. Remove one you no longer want from [Set up your pre-trip checks](/pre-trip/set-up-your-checks) and it stops appearing on future trips.
When everything is fixed, ticked, or set aside, the section shows the all-clear state. Read that as "no items loadmate is tracking for this trip". It is a quiet, plain signal, not a safety certificate.
### The Rig page calms down with you
The trip card on the Rig page reads the same tally as the checklist. While checks are outstanding it shows an amber "checks pending" strip and, close to departure, an attention card asking you to review the list — turning red only when you are within a day of leaving **and** something outstanding is itself a red-level finding. Once the checklist is clear, both go green and quiet: "No outstanding checks" and a calm "you're all set" card. If a trip alert ever looks urgent, the checklist behind it will show you exactly why — the two can no longer disagree.
## After the trip: share the summary
Sharing happens **after** a trip, not before. There is no pre-departure share or export of the readiness checklist. The checklist is for getting you ready, not for sending on.
Once a trip is completed, you can share it as a quick line of text from the completed trip. For the full flow, see [Share a trip summary](/trips/share-trip-summary).
Choose the walk-around checks you want on every trip's checklist, from the common list or your own.
Set up a planned trip with a destination and dates so you get a readiness checklist before you leave.
Once a trip is done, share it as a quick line of text from the trip.
**Try it now.** Open the Trips tab, tap an upcoming trip, and read its outstanding readiness items. Pick just one, say a tyre detail or a service that falls due mid-trip. Follow it through to its screen and fix it there. That is the whole habit: clear the visible items at their source before you leave.
## The walk-around still belongs to your eyes
The app cannot see your coupling, your mirrors, or your awning, and it never will. What it can do is hold your walk-around list so nothing gets skipped on a distracted morning: coupling locked, safety chains crossed, breakaway connected, lights and indicators working, tyres visibly sound, hatches and step stowed, gas secured, everything on the roof tied down.
Put those in [your pre-trip checks](/pre-trip/set-up-your-checks) once, and every trip gives you the same list to tick as you physically confirm each one at the rig. The tick records that *you looked* — it is your eyes doing the checking, with the app just keeping count.
loadmate helps you work from the numbers you enter. Keep your source documents handy, and use a weighbridge, truck scale, or local authority when you need official evidence.