Route planning is complicated. Just figuring out which routes your drivers should take to reach your customers is hard enough. On top of that, you also need to account for traffic, weather, construction, and other factors.
That can take hours. And after all that time spent planning routes, there’s no guarantee that the routes you come with are efficient or even accurate. Inefficient/inaccurate routes will forces your driver to drive more than necessary, which means they’ll use more gas than necessary.
Software Saves Gas
So, planning routes by yourself is problematic if you want to save money on gas.
But there’s no reason to plan routes by yourself.
With final mile delivery software, you can provide your drivers with more efficient routes. They won’t need to use as much fuel to make it to all their stops.
GPS Tracking Offers Additional Savings
Make sure the route planning software you invest in has a GPS tracking feature.
With GPS tracking, you can see where your drivers are and how fast they’re going in real-time. Whenever you want, you can check in on a driver to confirm that they’re staying on schedule.
Also, GPS tracking collects detailed data about your fuel consumption. You can use this information to determine which of your gas saving techniques are actually working.
Don’t Forget About Territory Mapping
Another feature you should look for is territory mapping.
It doesn’t make any sense to send your drivers back and forth across your entire service area. Instead, you should break your service area up into different territories and assign a driver to each territory.
A territory mapping feature allows you to do exactly that. You’ll save a lot of money on gas when each of your driver’s set of stops is closer together.