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Any company that provides delivery services to its customers should understand how critical a route planning app is to their success. This is because whenever your driver makes a delivery, a route planning application shows them the fastest and most efficient routes to take.
Consider how happy your drivers would be if they didn’t have to deal with bad routes. Their day will be uneventful and quick. There will be no more endless phone calls asking for directions or additional information. They will also arrive on time or make on-time deliveries, ensuring customer satisfaction.
However, how can you use a route planner to create the quickest route to work in record time? What procedures must you do to plan the optimum way? There are websites that you can find by searching on Google that provides a step-by-step approach on how to plan a route. You can also refer to this article for instructions on how to plan a route.
Let’s use Route4me as an example to teach you how to plan a route for the procedure.
Click “plan new route.”
First, open the Route4Me application and go to the tabs. Look for the “Routes” in the tab and then click “plan new route.”
Choose the address of the routes
This is the most crucial phase because it is here that you will choose from a list of possible destinations for your drivers. This means that the scope of your distribution services must be limited. If your company is based in Florida, for example, you can decide where the limit of your delivery services is. It can be that your scope is from Orange County to Orlando, and any place inside that scope should be added to this step.
Set the scope of your routes
This phase is more detailed than the previous one. After you’ve decided on your chosen technique for adding/importing addresses, you can start configuring the route’s parameters. The route’s name, start time, date, and sharing the route, optimization type, avoidance zone, directions, turn limits, and assigning the route to a specific user are all included.
Put the starting date and time
Go to the’ Schedule’ tab to select the date and hour that your driver will begin a route. For route planning and scheduling, this is critical. This is because starting before, during, or after morning traffic might impact the entire journey. Routes can also be scheduled to begin at sunrise or sunset.
To do just that, first, click on the respective icon, then enter your zip code in the “Sunrise” or “Sunset” form, and then choose from the list of suggested options. Furthermore, you can easily alter the trip time slow down to account for severe traffic, ensuring that your drivers get at their locations on time and your clients are satisfied.
Make the route plan shareable
You can share your trip plan with other riders if you have two or more drivers. The map route planner has a button that allows you to share route information with restricted access with your team members, drivers, and even your clients. Go to the Sharing tab and type the recipient’s email address in the appropriate section.
Choose from the Turn Restrictions
Left turns are frequently avoided by UPS truck drivers. This is since left turns are dangerous, waste time, and require a lot of gasoline. Your drivers may avoid left turns, U-turns, and right turns with Route4Me’s route planner for many stops. Go to the “Turn Restrictions” page and select the “Avoid” Button. Choose if you want to see the correct left turns, U-turns and right turns on your route plan, and click the permits in the tab.
Lastly, click the Create Route and Optimize Button
After you’ve finished configuring the route’s parameters, click “Create Route and Add Addresses.” Then, using the previously specified import method, add the addresses to the route. To generate the optimum route, click “Finished Adding Addresses” at the bottom of the page.