Optimize Routes with Maptitude Delivery Route Planner Software

The delivery route planner tools in Maptitude allow you to optimize routes among waypoints, calculate the distances between destinations, and produce driving directions.

Maptitude delivery route mapping software

What are the key features of delivery optimization software?

Key routing features of Maptitude Routing Software:

Easy to use route planning software to optimize delivery routes
Allows for manually editing routes by dragging the path to new destinations
Can prioritize travel over highways, allowing for faster routing over long distances
Can create a turn-by-turn directions report for your delivery drivers
Support for nationwide trip planning to an unlimited number of destinations
Multiple optimized delivery routes in a single map
Determines time and fuel costs
Extensive route planning tools
Includes a comprehensive suite of other business mapping software tools

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How do you optimize delivery routes?

When a trip involves many different stops, Maptitude delivery route planning software helps you optimize daily routes by deciding the best order to visit them. Most importantly, Maptitude lets you choose what type of route you want:

The shortest route
The fastest route (the speedy route!)
The ordered route (when visits or deliveries must be conducted sequentially)
The route that returns to the origin
The route that you interactively modify
The optimal route

The best route can mean different things to different people. Often the efficient route is the one that is the fastest, while others prefer the path that is shortest in terms of mileage, or a trip that maximizes use of highways, or avoids population centers.

Optimize delivery routes based on distance and time with Maptitude delivery route planner

Optimize routes based on time or distance

What is the best software to optimize delivery routes?

Maptitude delivery route optimization software is the best delivery route planner for meeting all of the demands listed above. Maptitude uses an accurate and up-to-date street database, handles one-way streets, and supports display of these on the map.

You can easily get started planning your route by simply clicking in a map on all the places you want to visit. You can also locate stops by typing an address, or automatically by using multiple addresses in an Excel spreadsheet or in any other table or database. If you have a point layer of your customers, you could select the customers you want to visit and then have Maptitude optimize delivery routes to visit them.

Optimize delivery routes

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Modeling Long-Haul Trips

When analyzing long-haul trips, an analyst often wants to model routes that go through the night or that have custom rest times. Maptitude allows you to create overnight routes or routes with no fixed end time. Also, the rest settings support government rules such as those for interstate truck drivers in the USA. Additionally, you can cluster your lists of customers sites that need visiting and optimize a route for each group of destinations.

Maptitude map of customers automatically clustered for route optimization

Cluster your customer sites for route optimization

Multi Route Planning

When you need a multiple route planner, Maptitude helps you optimize each route by deciding which stops should be visited by which driver and vehicle. Maptitude even lets you choose the capacity and types of vehicle, supporting analysts that need:

A multi drop route planner software
A route planner with unlimited stops
A route planner multiple stops

Maptitude multi drop unlimited stop route planner software application

Examples of optimization of delivery routes

Planning your delivery routes for anything from food delivery to service calls requires robust analytics. This case study is one example of how such tools provide tangible business benefits.

“We have found Maptitude to be a really useful piece of software. It allows us to quickly and easily represent various data geographically, and the ease of functionality and ability to layer data makes it really user friendly. It has, among other things, helped us develop our sector-leading delivery service and understand areas that require focus from our sales teams.”

Richard Horton
Transportation Development & Planning Manager, Travis Perkins
Northampton, United Kingdom

“Caliper produces the inexpensive Maptitude desktop GIS package which has extensive GIS-Transportation functionality.”

Prof. Nigel Waters
Calgary, Alberta

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Nine Tips to Improve Your Delivery Routes

Free online directions tools are generally not well suited for business and delivery company routing problems.
You may be able to use free tools to optimize a single list of addresses, but you will likely have to manually type the locations into the tool.
A mapping software or geographic information system (GIS) such as Maptitude can perform the same tasks as the free tools but can also automatically map lists of locations from a spreadsheet and handle multiple routes.
Multiple vehicle, multiple stop, optimization requires a sophisticated logistics solution such as Maptitude. Maptitude can model trips either singly or optimize across a vehicle fleet to ensure the most efficient allocation of resources.
You will need an operations and logistics application, not a simple "directions" application, when you require more sophisticated options such as:

Multiple vehicle fleets
Varying start and end times for different drivers
Scheduled delivery times by customer
Varying demand in terms of product volume to be delivered to each customer
Multiple start and end locations for each driver
Drop-offs as well as pickups
Long haul routes that can extend over night
Requirements for driver rest periods
Variable speeds that different vehicles can travel and over different types of roads
Varying times spent at each stop
Whether you need to track toll and fuel costs
Specifying the flexibility you have in meeting scheduled arrival and departure times

Consider driving schedules. You may want to prevent creating overnight stops where an unfinished route is assumed to resume the next day. You can do this by looking at what could reasonably be the last stop of the day and choosing an amount of time you are willing to allow drivers to continue each day.
Consider time to spend at each stop. Itineraries need to make reasonable assumptions about how long on average a delivery driver stays at each stop. For most applications you need to avoid applications that allow no time for stop duration, because they assume you are just driving past each location! When you know the variable time to spend at each location that is even more valuable in determining accurate routes. This may be based on factors such as number or type of deliveries at each site or a predetermined visit length.
Build in rest time. Accurately specifying the length and frequency of rests, and choosing whether the frequency is based on total route time or just driving time, are critical factors to consider when scheduling routes.
Choose whether to calculate driving costs based on either fuel (based on price and consumption) or a flat rate per mile is another way to manage routes. Often it is important to minimize actual monetary costs per route, in addition to determining the most efficient directions.