Your drivers will make on-time deliveries if they get the best directions to work.

Furthermore, with the best directions, you will save on fuel and labor costs since each driver will be able to deliver more in less time and will never get stuck on the road.

ALSO READ: Top 7 Must-Know Strategies For Reducing Fuel Costs

But, planning an optimized delivery route with accurate turn-by-turn directions is not easy when done manually.

You will spend hours if you plan routes with pen and paper, or Excel.

Add to that the numerous chances of errors, especially when you are planning a route with multiple stops.

So, how do you make sure that your drivers show up on time while saving fuel costs too?

Here are four practical tips:

Four Ways to Find the Best Directions to Work and Increase Profitability

Constant Vigilance

Which areas are causing a delay in delivering orders?

Which routes are talking the longest time?

Finding answers to such questions will help you find the fastest directions to work.

So, keep track of the difficulties your drivers face on the road and the slowdowns that cause them to be late for work.

Then, when you next plan a route with multiple stops, consider such information to find the best directions to work.

Cluster Delivery Stops to Provide the Best Directions to Work

You can plan the stops in such a way that a driver does not need to run around the entire city to deliver orders.

You can achieve this by clustering delivery stops in different areas and assigning each area to a driver.

Remember this when you plot a route. This one simple change can have more than one benefit. You will save fuel, and your drivers will get more orders delivered at the same time.

And last but not the least, each driver will become well acquainted with their area, meaning that they would be able to navigate the roads better.

Plan Strategically to Find the Best Directions to Work

Considering how fast delivery and next-day delivery is a thing now, you must surely have such orders to deliver every day. So, you must start with the urgent orders first and then move on to the other deliveries from there.

This will ensure that the urgent orders get delivered first and then your drivers can reach their addresses fast too by taking the best directions to work.

ALSO READ: The Many Same-Day Delivery Challenges and Their Solutions

Invest in a Route Planner to Find the Best Directions to Work

This is the best way to ensure your drivers get the fastest and shortest route with the best directions to work. We explain how in the next section.

ALSO READ: Shortest vs. Fastest Route: When You May Need Different Types

What Is Route Optimization Software?

As said before, planning routes manually with pen and paper is cumbersome and carries a high chance of errors.

Furthermore, you cannot predict road situations, weather conditions, or sudden vehicle breakdowns when manually planning routes. These are disruptors that can seriously tarnish your business’s reputation.

Your customers are not interested in how bad the traffic was. If their orders are late, they will simply switch to your competitors.

ALSO READ: How Route Planning Can Help Your Brand’s Reputation

Want To See For Yourself How Route4Me Can Boost Your Profits?

Whether you want to slash the time it takes you to plan routes for your drivers, increase the number of stops they can make, or keep your customers satisfied knowing that your drivers show up on time… Route4Me helps you achieve that!

Start Free 7 Day Trial

You might consider using Google Maps for route planning, but this app has limitations.

For instance, Google Maps route planner for deliveries only allows you to plot 10 stops on the free version and only up to 25 stops on the paid one. That is not even close to the number of deliveries your drivers make in a single day.

Also, it does not provide route optimization; it only does route planning. Meaning, you can find the fastest routes to multiple locations, but not the most efficient ones.

ALSO READ: Secrets of Google Route Optimization

The difference between the fastest and the most efficient route is that the former is good for a single-stop destination while the latter is essential for multiple stops.

To understand why, consider this example: You want to reach Points A and B from Point C. The fastest route will be from Point C to A and then from Point A to B.

What if the routes make you travel through the same place again and again?

Then, it is not the most efficient or optimal route. A route planner app will not only show you the fastest and shortest route, but also the most efficient route.

Thus, it saves you fuel, time, and effort as you spend less time striving to deliver orders on time.

ALSO READ: How A Route Planner Can Help You Reduce Fuel Costs

However, route optimization is not the only reason why you should invest in dispatch routing software for getting the best directions to work.

There are numerous other reasons too, such as:

Route planner apps consider things like traffic conditions, idle time at a customer location, order priority, weather forecast, delivery time windows, weather, and sunrise and sunset times to plan a well-optimized route with the best direction to work.

Such factors are almost impossible to predict manually and Google Maps is not cut out to work this way.

Learn how to plan a route with multiple stops in 30 seconds.

Nevertheless, these can have a profound effect on how efficiently your drivers deliver their orders.

A delivery route planner will let you plot an unlimited number of stops, is easy to use, and will have a centralized control system to allow supervisors to update stops if and when necessary.

ALSO READ: How a Centralized Transportation Management System Works

A multi-stop route planner like Route4Me does not just help you with directions to work but also comes integrated with features that are extremely important for your delivery business. Some of these features are:

GPS tracking

It allows you to know exactly where your drivers are. You can send assistance immediately in case of a breakdown and see if your drivers are wasting time on the job.

Here are some articles to learn how GPS tracking can help manage your field operations efficiently, reduce expenses and improve profit margin.

Customer Portal

This feature helps customers track their deliveries on their own. So, your customer care team will no longer need to keep answering queries regarding orders.

Your customers can monitor a wide array of information about their deliveries (such as the estimated delivery time, the driver’s identity, and custom fields) and track the same in real-time.

This information minimizes customer interaction with the delivery personnel and other works related to administrative and customer services.

Customer Alerting and Notification

This feature allows you to notify your customers through emails and SMSs when their orders are out for delivery.

This will reduce idle time at a location, minimize rescheduling of deliveries, and increase customer satisfaction. You can also schedule exactly when you want to notify the customer.

For example, you can notify customers the day before a route with the approximate arrival time of a driver with up to 5-minute accuracy.

Or, when drivers begin approaching certain customers, you may want to notify them when the driver is within 5 miles, 5 minutes, or 5 kilometers of their location.

If you subcontract work to other drivers, our tracking and notification works with their routes and devices too. That means your customers are always in the loop, and your customer service team won’t be distracted with low-value activities.

Digital Proof-of-Delivery (POD)

You will have no more conflicts and customer complaints regarding non-delivery of orders. Your drivers can collect e-signatures or pictures as digital PODs. This also allows for contactless delivery, which has become the new normal.

ALSO READ: How to Implement No-Contact Delivery for Your Business

In-app Camera-based Address Scanner

Route4Me’s in-app address scanner helps you scan the address on each package within minutes, suggests geocoded address options to choose from, and lets you instantly add scanned addresses to new or planned routes.

Learn how Camera-Based Address Scanning to Help You Save up to 60 minutes Per Day Planning Your Routes

Driver Breaks

Route4Me comes with a Driver Breaks feature that helps reduce driver fatigue by providing sufficient rest breaks during the journey.

It allows you to insert adjustable break stops into the already planned routes with just a touch of a button, and Route4Me will automatically choose the most optimal location and stop sequence for the insertion, as well as recalculate the route’s time and distance accordingly.

You can insert breaks after a specific time your drivers spend on the road or servicing customers, after a particular number of visited locations or the defined elapsed time of the route. The feature allows you to predefine the duration of each break and choose from multiple insertion options.

ALSO READ: How to Reduce Driver Fatigue and Improve Productivity

Reporting and Analytics

You need to know what you’re doing in order to know what you need to improve.

For example, you need to track your fuel costs each month to know if it’s a reasonable expense or something you need to cut down on.

Route4Me’s advanced multiple stops route planner comes with reporting and analytics feature that allows you to keep track of fuel costs and all kinds of other information.

This feature helps you track fuel expenses and all kinds of other information that can help you make your field operations more efficient.

Distance (Planned vs. Actual)
Stops (Planned vs. Visited)
Time (Planned vs. Actual)
Routes per Day
Average Time On Site vs. Allocated Service Time
Stops per Day (Planned vs. Visited)
Notes per Day

Activity Feed

The activity feed displays all the activities in your account, including driver progress, note additions, and route modifications.

The activity feed consists of three sections:

Filtering and search options
Latest activities in chronological order
Navigation options between multiple activity feed pages

You can filter your search by:

Member (shows the activity feed for a specific user)
Type (shows the results for one of the predefined activity types)
Date (shows the results for a predefined period)

Geofencing

It’s nice to have the ability to keep track of your drivers, but no one has the time to keep their eyes on the screen 24/7 and follow every move they make.

That’s why Route4Me’s route planner is integrated with geofencing technology.

It enables you to create virtual fencing around vehicle storage facilities.

For example, you can fence off a driver’s parking lot or home. Whenever that driver leaves a geofence perimeter you’ve set, you’ll immediately be notified.

You can also create virtual fencing around customer locations so that you know instantly when your driver makes their stops.

Geofences are triggered automatically inside the Route4Me route optimization software – you don’t need to enable or disable it inside the tool to make it work for you.

Learn What is Geofencing, and how it can eliminate tedious paperwork.

And if you are in the construction business, read how geofencing makes construction sites safer.

Voice-Guided Navigation

Route4Me offers in-app voice-guided navigation feature so your drivers never have to watch a map on a phone (especially in low-light or high-traffic conditions). They also do not need to use one app for route planning and a different app for navigation.

Hopefully, the tips shared here will help your delivery drivers reach work faster by providing them with the best directions to work. Use the tips and see your delivery business grow leaps and bounds.

Read about more Route4Me Features that Make Navigation more Seamless.

Want To See For Yourself How Route4Me Can Boost Your Profits?

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How to Find the Best Directions to Work for Your Delivery Drivers

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