Best HGV Route Planners in 2024

Operating a commercial trucking business has always been challenging for fleet managers and logistics professionals. 

If you’re reading this blog, you’re likely grappling with the complexities of managing heavy goods vehicles (HGVs), including: 

• Controlling ever-rising fuel costs, 
• Ensuring legal compliance with commercial routing restrictions, 
• Overcoming inefficient routing that leads to longer detours, frequent traffic jams, and missed delivery timelines.

This is where the right HGV routing software proves to be invaluable. It caters to the unique needs of commercial trucking, enabling legally compliant, safe, and efficient transportation while optimizing operational costs.

With the market offering numerous HGV route planner software solutions, selecting the most suitable option can be overwhelming. This blog provides a comprehensive guide, detailing the top 7 HGV route planner software that will help you create dedicated truck routes and transform your fleet management approach.

What Is HGV (Heavy Goods Vehicle) Route Planning?

HGV route planning refers to tailoring the delivery route for commercial motor vehicles and ensuring they achieve the highest productivity during the process. It involves analyzing physical and regulatory specifications of routes that HGVs can travel on, including tunnels, bridges, vehicle height,  weight, and size.

The route planner needs to perform complex routing processing to simplify the results. The route planning algorithms must understand the requirements of commercial fleet management, truck restrictions, and requirements.

The truck route planning software analyzes the refueling stops, rest breaks, and other factors that can deliver the desired routing results.

The truck routing software functions differently than other software focused on fast, highly dense delivery stops.

Criteria of Selection

We aim to bring you a detailed comparative analysis of HGV route planning software to help you make an informed choice. For this, we evaluated potential software options based on how they cater to HGV routing needs and how they compete against us. 

So, we evaluated our picks based on the most essential features for HGV routing, including:

• Multi-constrained route planning effectiveness to see the extent to which optimized routes help balance traffic, priority, delivery windows, drivers’ shifts, and break durations.
• Vehicle-specific routing capabilities to see how legally compliant suggested paths are and help avoid restricted roads, low-clearance underpasses, low bridges, narrow streets, and weight-restricted roads.
• Real-time tracking to determine how accurately the software in question tracks vehicles’ movements and locations
• Availability-based scheduling that helps ensure drivers don’t overwork and strain themselves while ensuring compliance with Hours of Service (HoS) regulations. 
• Pricing structure to help you determine if your desired features are available in the base pricing plan or are offered as paid add-ons and analyze return on investment.

To avoid being carried away by our HGV route planner’s abilities, we factored in users’ reviews and feedback about different solutions across prominent review platforms to eliminate natural bias.

7 Top HGV Route Planner Software

1. Upper Route Planner

We know the commercial routing industry in and out and leave no stone unturned to make HGV route planning efficient and profitable. 

This is why our Upper’s route planning and optimization software suite includes a plethora of features, such as vehicle -specific routing, tracking, and reporting capabilities to enhance multiple-stop long-haul route management.

Upper helps create efficient routes while considering constraints, such as avoiding tolls, highways, road closures, one-way streets, or high-congestion city neighborhoods. 

Moreover, Upper lets you consider vehicle capacity specifics while scheduling deliveries and ensures that trucks are not dispatched to load-restricted roads, avoiding legal penalties. 

This route planner further helps you comply with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration or FMCA’s Hours of Service (HOS) regulations by scheduling routes for drivers based on their shift durations and breaks. This helps ensure that their daily driving hours don’t exceed the permissible Hours of Service, thus, preventing fines and penalties. 

For collaboration, Upper offers GPS reporting capabilities to track deliveries and inform customers of their progress through status updates. This helps them stay abreast of delivery progress. If an unforeseen incident like a vehicle breakdown or accident causes a delay, Upper lets you inform customers about the updated estimated time of arrival (ETA) to maintain trust and transparency. 

Moreover, you can communicate with your drivers through Upper’s in-app chat to know run-time issues, take measures to fix them, and avoid disruptions.

We’ve also prioritized driver safety by providing seamless integration with navigation apps like Google Maps, Apple Maps, and Waze, enabling hands-free, voice-guided directions that keep drivers focused on the road.

Note: If you are a solo driver or independent contractor, Upper Solo can be an ideal solution for you. It lets you upload hundreds of addresses through Excel or CSV import, validate their accuracy, and prevent errors. You can further navigate the most efficient routes based on delivery windows, priority, and average duration per stop.

Features:

• Multi-constrained route optimization: Stuck with balancing multiple constraints? Upper does that for you by factoring in delivery time windows, order priority, delivery distances, vehicle capacity specifics, and legal driving hours to keep your routes optimal and legally compliant.    
• In-transit route edits (dynamic routing): Got to handle unforeseen changes? With Upper, you can add or delete stops, and resequence them to accommodate emergencies, new orders, or cancellations. This dynamic routing keeps your delivery operations smooth and hassle-free. 
• Customized mapping: Ever found it hard to tell apart different types of jobs? No more difficulty distinguishing them with Upper. Simply configure the colors of your location pins based on types, such as deliveries or pickups, and visualize your routes better.
• Capacity optimization: Does optimizing your vehicles’ capacity remain a constant challenge for you? Use Upper to set your vehicle’s limits, including weight and volume, and schedule loads that fit those specifications. This helps make the most of your vehicle capacity and maximize profitability.
• Route summaries: Struggling to keep a pulse on your fleet performance? Enter Upper’s route reports that let you track successful deliveries, exceptions, pending deliveries, and more that you need to assess your delivery performance. This way, you can identify and eliminate inefficiencies and elevate your fleet performance. 
• Manifest-based loading: Do you often end up spending excess time at each stop? Put it to an end by printing route manifests and loading parcels based on the sequence of stops. You can further configure stop details to specify the position of the parcel headed there. This expedites parcel identification and unloading of the parcel at each stop. 
• Integration with different software: Got to establish connected workflows? Upper lets you achieve it through seamless integration with e-commerce storefronts like Shopify. You can simply import orders directly and pin them as locations on maps based on their addresses, making routing faster. It further integrates with electronic logging devices to track drivers’ working hours and ensure they stay within permissible legal limits to prevent violation of HoS regulations.

Pricing:

Starts at $40 per user per month.

2. TourSolver

A professional cloud-based HGV management software, Toursolver can deliver an excellent experience in planning routes for long-distance and heavy-load deliveries. The software is ideal for businesses from different industries and of different scales.

Features

• Route Simulation: Toursolver offers a great simulator, enabling your delivery businesses to assess time, improve cost results, calculate mileage, and optimize decisions. 
• Export Capabilities: TourSolver lets you export itineraries and schedules using Excel, iCalender, or PDF with the logistics and transportation team.

3. MyRouteOnline

MyRouteOnline is a sophisticated route optimization software that transforms Excel files into efficient and shortest truck routes. Designed to streamline logistics operations, the platform helps businesses optimize longer HGV routes and dispatch them rapidly and effectively.

Features

• Route Optimization: You can access MyRouteOnline’s free version of the software to experience the process of creating multiple truck delivery routes.
• Driving Instructions: Your truck drivers can get turn-to-turn truck driving directions that can help you complete the delivery task quickly and effectively.
• Business Scaling: You can handle longer routes and heavy delivery orders to scale your business revenue and profits.
• Route Management: The software lets you explore the truck routes, print, and reload for a better delivery experience.

4. Route4Me

Route4me is a quality HGV route optimization software that can help you dispatch different heavy products or goods with the assistance of powerful built-in navigation. You can create the shortest delivery paths to ensure your workforce delivers quality results.

Features

• Delivery Route Planning: You can control your delivery operations and ensure that your HGV delivery workflow encounters minimal hurdles and discrepancies.
• Real-Time Tracking: Route4me updates the truck driver’s real-time location, which can help you provide your customers with a quality customer experience.

5. WorkWave

WorkWave is a professional truck route planning software that saves time for delivery drivers and helps you make more money with enhanced truck deliveries.

Features

• Workflow Optimization: WorkWave offers premium features to optimize your workflow and increase business efficiency. Quality truck route optimization software can automate the scheduling process and show you the shortest delivery paths, which is ideal for HGV deliveries.
• Time Window Planning: Allows precise scheduling of deliveries within specific time constraints to meet customer expectations.
• API Integration: WorkWave enables smooth integration with other business systems and software to establish connected workflows.
• Driver app: Provides mobile access for drivers to manage routes, receive updates, and track deliveries in real time.

6. Lytx

Lytx offers a wide range of software, hardware, and valuable API integrations to help you manage your fleet operations. It stands out for video safety solutions powered by machine vision and artificial intelligence to identify and address risky situations.

Features

• GPS fleet tracking: This lets you get real-time access to fleet statuses to identify and address problems, enhance customer satisfaction, and respond faster.
• HOS compliance: Electronic logging device (ELD) compliance solutions streamline HOS reporting to ensure your logged hours are up-to-date and show complete details of miles and time. 
• Asset tracking: This feature lets you maintain a list of asset locations and track their utilization to allocate resources more efficiently and whether to acquire more or divest.

7. Samsara

Samsara is an all-in-one software solution that helps you gain higher visibility by establishing a connection between fleets, equipment, and managers. 

Features 

• Centralized platform: Samsara offers a unified platform to help you manage fleets, equipment, sites, and staff, which facilitates seamless coordination across your business aspects.
• Fuel reports: Samsara provides visibility into fuel trends and sends daily, weekly, and monthly fuel reports to identify abnormal activities, address them, and enhance fuel efficiency.
• Paperless driver vehicle inspection reports: This helps you simplify your maintenance workflows, conduct pre- and post-trip vehicle inspections, and automate photo uploads and eSignatures.

The Benefits of HGV Route Planning

HGV route planning provides several benefits for a business, as follows. 

1. Reduces travel time

HGV route planning helps create efficient HGV-specific routes and suggests alternative routes if needed to help avoid congested areas. This enables you to meet delivery timelines while complying with Hours of Service. 

2. Minimizes fuel consumption

HGV route planning helps you cover multiple destinations most efficiently while minimizing idling, empty miles, and backtracking. This allows you to cut down on fuel consumption and increase profit margins.

3. Improved customer satisfaction

By ensuring on-time deliveries, you can enhance your client relations and build their trust and loyalty. You can also notify them of accurate estimated times of arrival (ETAs) that help them stay available and prepared to receive orders, decreasing failed delivery attempts and return journeys. 

4. Enhances drivers’ safety

HGV route planning enables you to create routes that help you prevent low bridges, or load-restricted roads, and comply with country-specific restrictions. Moreover, it lets you track your vehicles in real time and indicates overspeeding, and deviations so you can address them proactively. 

5. Enables legal compliance

HGV route planning enables you to consider vehicle capacity specifics while scheduling deliveries to dispatch vehicles on the roads suitable for them. This helps prevent your vehicles from entering truck-restricted roads and avoid legal issues.

6. Reduced carbon footprint

HGV route planning will help create optimal routes that reduce travel distance and hence, carbon emissions. This will enable you to achieve sustainable fleet operations by reducing their carbon footprint.

How To Optimize an HGV Route?

1. Collect your data

To begin with, collect crucial information, such as customers’ locations, delivery distances, vehicles’ capacities, and traffic patterns in your delivery areas. This helps you make smart decisions and create optimal routes. 

• Look for roads with fewer stops and urban high-density congestion and plan your drivers’ journeys during off-peak hours to decrease travel time. .
• Another factor that plays a crucial role is weather. So, take into account the weather forecast to plan your journeys so there are minimal delays. 

2. Integrate an HGV route planner

Integrate a professional HGV route planner to help you analyze the data, including vehicles’ payload capacity, delivery distances, drivers’ shifts, break durations, and customers’ preferred delivery time slots. 

Based on these factors, an HGV route planner creates the most optimal multi-stop routes for drivers that help reduce time, meet delivery timelines, and maximize the total deliveries per journey.  

3. Ensure compliance with state-specific regulations

While planning routes for commercial vehicles, you must ensure you avoid load-restricted roads, underpasses with lower clearances, or bridges with capacity limits not matching your vehicles’.

Another aspect is complying with Hours of Service regulations. For this, you must plan your drivers’ schedules and routes that consider drivers’ shifts and break durations. This will help ensure drivers’ total hours on the road at a stretch don’t exceed the limit set by state-wise HoS regulations, which prevents legal penalties.

4. Make dynamic route adjustments

Unprecedented circumstances, such as traffic jams, road closures, harsh weather conditions, or vehicle breakdowns can cause disruptions to delivery operations. 

Using an HGV route planner can help you edit routes in transit by adding or deleting stops or changing their sequence to accommodate last-minute orders or cancellations. Moreover, you can reassign stops to another driver in case of emergency like accidents so deliveries are completed on time. 

5. Review and adjust routes regularly

Though you have planned the best HGV routes, they may be rendered infeasible due to landscape changes, construction, diversions, or road closures due to seasonal factors such as snow blockades or waterlogging in heavy rains. 

Moreover, drivers may face difficulty traversing certain roads due to reasons such as rough terrain or other obstructions. So, it is important to review your routes regularly and see if there are any adjustments needed. You can also consider drivers’ feedback to refine and update your routes. 

6. Conduct regular training for your drivers

Drivers form the backbone of delivery businesses. So, it is essential to train them in smart driving practices. You can enroll them in comprehensive training programs where they get hands-on lessons on maneuvering large vehicles. They should also have a solid understanding of vehicle repair and maintenance. 

For instance, they must know engine components, tire pressures, and brake systems. They must also know how to repair minor issues in their vehicles in case they are stuck along the way. Lessons on eco-friendly driving practices, including minimizing idling, smooth acceleration and braking, and proper use of gears can also help optimize your operations. 

Transform HGV Logistics with Route Planners

HGV route planning is more complex than conventional delivery routing. This is because it requires you to consider multiple factors, including vehicle capacity specifications, legal limitations, and operational constraints, including, weight limit, bridge clearances, road restrictions, and hours of Service regulations

By implementing advanced HGV route planner software, delivery businesses can create multi-stop long-haul routes while balancing all these constraints. 

Such software plays a crucial role in the evolving transportation sector by helping companies stay competitive in the evolving transportation sector. It helps them reduce fuel consumption, minimize carbon footprint, enhance drivers’ safety, improve customer satisfaction, and achieve legal compliance. 

So, if you are also looking to optimize your HGV routing operations, it’s time to pick the right software from the list provided above. If you are still unsure, feel free to book a demo of our software Upper to help you understand how it can transform your HGV operations. You can also take a 7-day free trial to see how it can help you with HGV routing.