Helpful tips for better route planning

If you’re serious about last-mile deliveries, you really need a dedicated route planning app that’s designed with the needs of logistics operations

Sam Cherhabil

July 14, 2022

8

min read

If you’re serious about last-mile deliveries, you really need a dedicated route planning app that’s designed with the needs of logistics operations in mind.

Route planning is essential to the success of any business. The better your routes are planned out, the more productive your delivery team will be and the more satisfied your customers will be with your service.

Here are some helpful tips to help you create better route plans and increase productivity in your organization.

Group your Destinations

One of the first and easiest ways to optimize your route planning is by grouping your destinations together. Grouping locations that are near to each other will make the route much more efficient.

‍

It’s easy, place all your order on a map such as Google Map or our platform Gomove. Notice which delivery destinations are close to each other and try to assign each group to a different delivery team if you have multiple trucks. If not, it would be best to have a day of the week dedicated to the northern part of the city and another day dedicated to the southern part. In that way, drivers will be delivering orders to nearby locations rather than driving back and forth from one side of town to the other.

Stick to your commitments

You should aim to deliver in the promised time and if there is an emergency you should inform your customer as soon as possible. A customer waiting at home in the dark will be angry and call all day. Your reputation is at stake here.

Over-booking is easily the most common reason why deliveries need to be re-scheduled. For proper planning and to make sure everyone is being delivered on time, you need to know how long it usually takes to deliver a customer and how long, on average, an installation is if you offer this service.

You also need to know if the items you are planning to send will all fit in the truck! Although this can be done manually with an experienced dispatcher, anyone can do it with the proper delivery management platform. In the industry, this is called capacity management and will allow you to fill all your trucks to capacity and therefore be more efficient.

Finally, never forget to schedule some extra buffer time into your delivery schedule just in case something goes wrong.

Keep control over your delivery team

Drivers are, most of the time, 3rd party partners. Don’t let them decide on how the route will be done. It’s your business and your customers. You don’t want to end up in a situation where you have no control over people that represent your brand! Keeping control of your drivers and communicating the changes to them can be done via our platform.

Again, communication is key to your success. If your delivery team is not aware of the initial plan or if there are last-minute changes to the route, they should be informed rapidly. From experience, we know how difficult it can be to deal with third-party, and the better the process establish between your company and them is, the better the results will be.

Understanding your city

You know your city, you know the busy area, you know the busy bridges. Build your routes the same way you would plan your own commute trip. Sometimes starting your deliveries in the borough further from downtown and away from the morning traffic can increase your efficiency by 30% easily.

An understanding of your city’s streets and urban geography can be an invaluable part of building routes that minimize traffic and maximize efficiency. A route management software is perfect to get a better view of choke points and popular intersections. It helps you to identify where there might be delays and increase travel time and allow you to modify delivery routes on the fly! Even subtle changes can make big differences, saving drivers at least one hour per day in increased productivity and saving big on gas!

‍