The Use of Software for Vehicle Route Planning
By now, you already know how cumbersome planning your routes with pen and paper can be for you and your staffs. Besides, there’s no guarantee that you will optimize your routes well, so you can still get negative reviews from customers for delayed delivery, despite your efforts.
A few reasons that can cause this include:
- Drivers getting stuck in traffic during rush hours
- Being stuck in bad weather conditions that are not anticipated
You know your customers are not ready to listen to excuses, so this can possibly push you down on the competition.
There are a lot other more serious issues that you stand to face if you refuse to take the use of Transport software for vehicle route planning serious. Imagine additional fuel expenses, driver attrition and legal hassles, all because you are taking inaccurate routes.
The truth is that no matter how hard you might try, it is almost impossible to manually design a great optimized route.
Why’s this?
- You can’t view a complete map on your spreadsheet
- You can really identify the exact time that your drivers will need to take a left turn.
- You can’t know which road is still being constructed from your office.
- You won’t know the easiest ways to negotiate routes you are unfamiliar with.
The list is endless, but with the use of proper transport software for route planning, you would not need to worry about all these. Research results even suggest that such software can even reduce planning time by up to 20% and logistics costs by a massive 50%!
Well, you may be among the many logistics and delivery businesses that are still asking if such software really benefits your organization as promised.
You’re not wrong for asking – after all, the rule should be that if a product can’t radically revolutionize the way your organization operate, then it’s not worth investing in.
For this reason and many more, we’ve decided that this article be channeled towards giving you in-depth information about the use of transport software for route planning and how it helps in route optimization
- Plan a Route in Far Less Time
Normally, we’ll say less than 30 seconds to plan your route, while it takes a couple of minutes when you use pen and paper. Route optimization software makes it seamless and quick.
The software finishes the required head aching calculations in just a few seconds, providing you with 100% accurate answers that will help route optimization. So, you can imagine all the hours you will save in route planning.
Apart from that, your drivers now have an opportunity to cover more routes within the short time they operate, since they are now working on better routes.
- Avoid Difficult Turns
With the coverage of many routes come the difficulty in facing different types of turns, from U-turns, to right turns and left turns. Each turn has its own challenges, especially with drivers rushing to meet up with delivery time. These turns can be time wasting as drivers are forced to wait for oncoming traffic to clear. This may lead to additional fuel usage and expenses.
It’s also difficult to complete a U-turn in a crowded street, so drivers may be forced to take longer routes to get to their destinations.
The issue with manual planning is that it doesn’t let you consider such turns and of course you know how dangerous that is.
Here, a transport software becomes highly important for route planning. Such software are designed with features that helps a driver avoid U-turns, left turns and other turns. All you need to do is select preference and the software will automatically help to plan a route for you where you won’t meet the specified turns.
- Keep Your Drivers Safe from Bad Weather Conditions
Reports suggest that over 22% of annual road crashes are related to weather. Additionally, road accidents go up by up to 200% during rainy season.
The above statistics show the dangers of driving in bad weather conditions and of course accidents will not only make you spend more on medical, repair and legal issues, but it’ll also lead to lose of customers due to bad customer experience.
With manual planning, it is almost impossible to avoids these risks, because you do not know areas that would experience awful weather hours into your trip.
Well, the use of route scheduling software us an easy way to get over this.
During the process of route planning, the software looks at anticipated weather conditions in your route, using it to advise you on the best route to follow and what speed to run on at different times.
There’s a whole lot of other reasons and standout points why you should adopt the use if transport software for route planning and optimization.
