Features
Route planner
Builds every van's round automatically, in driving order, and rebuilds it the moment a late order lands.
Route planner splits a day's orders across the vehicles a wholesaler actually owns and builds each round in driving order, respecting time windows, payload, chilled space, licence class and drivers' hours. It builds this automatically from the day's priced orders and rebuilds it the moment a late order or a short pick changes it.
A whiteboard and a person's memory of the roads can plan two vans. It struggles at six, and it cannot see a driver's hours or a chilled compartment already full. Route planner uses the same information a good dispatcher already uses - it is simply built every day, for every van, in the time it takes to read this sentence.
How it works
- 01Every priced order for the day feeds the plan, with its time window and what it actually weighs.
- 02Drops are spread across the vans you own, respecting payload, chilled compartments, licence class and each driver's hours.
- 03The round is built in driving order, not the order the orders arrived in.
- 04A late order can join a round that has not left yet, without disturbing what has already been picked.
- 05The driver's phone shows one thing: where next, and how to get in. Not a spreadsheet to interpret.
What one day's plan looks like
What it replaces
Route planner replaces a whiteboard and a person working the round out by hand. What took half an hour to plan is built in a few seconds once the orders are in.
What it works with
- Buy listThe picking sheet behind a round comes from the same day's buy list.
- Driver's phoneThe finished round loads straight onto the driver's own phone.
- Google Maps, Apple Maps, WazeEach stop opens in the driver's own maps app, in the order the round was built.
Plainly
What it will not do on its own
- It does not choose your vans or your drivers for you. It plans against the fleet and the shifts you give it.
- It will not route around a closure it has not been told about. A driver can still override a stop order.
- It does not replace a driver's own judgement at the door. It gets them there in the right order.
What it replaces
A whiteboard and a person working the round out by hand.
Time it saves
A six-van night that takes the best part of half an hour to plan by hand is built in a few seconds once the orders are in.
Worth in money
Say that half hour is a dispatcher on £13 an hour - a bit over £6 back every night the round is built, about £35 across a six-night week.
Questions people ask
- What does route planner actually do?
- It splits a day's orders across the vehicles a wholesaler owns and builds each round in driving order, respecting time windows, payload, chilled space, licence class and drivers' hours, rather than leaving a person to plan it on a whiteboard.
- Does it work with more than one van?
- Yes. It plans across however many vehicles are entered, including different compartment types for chilled and ambient stock.
- What happens if an order comes in late?
- It can be added to a round that has not yet left, without disturbing the pick already done for the rest of that round.
- Does the driver need signal?
- The round loads before the van leaves and works with no signal in a loading bay, catching up once there is a connection.
Give us one night.
Send us one evening's orders. We run the night next to you. In the morning you compare the two.