How to Send Planned Routes to Delivery Drivers Easily?

Delivery route dispatching is not an easy task, even if you are managing a small fleet. Planning and dispatching routes for just two drivers will take a dispatch manager up to 3-4 hours each day. Imagine, what will happen if they have 8, 10, or 20 drivers?

With multiple vehicles and multiple drivers coming in and going out for their pickups and deliveries, it is difficult to keep a track of them all manually. 

A dispatch manager often manually coordinates the routes and the delivery drivers. But this is a terribly time-consuming method. Why would any delivery business want to dispatch routes manually when they can do it with the help of delivery route optimization software? Herein we will discuss how to send planned routes to delivery drivers and help them make deliveries in clicks.

The Challenges of Dispatching Optimized Routes to Multiple Drivers

Here are some of the challenges faced by a dispatch manager when distributing workloads manually:

1. Unable to Consider Driver Availability

Identifying available drivers and scheduling routes according to their availability is a difficult task to do manually. 

Dispatch managers have to go through the schedules of different drivers and identify which drivers will be available to make deliveries on a particular day. 

2. Unable to Consider Vehicle Capacity

Keeping a note of how many packages a vehicle can carry or which vehicle has the ability to carry out a particular number of deliveries is another challenge.

3. Daily Depot Visits for Receiving Routes

Dispatchers are not the only ones facing difficulty in dispatching routes. Delivery drivers also find it difficult to go all the way to the dispatcher’s office to receive their daily tasks.

This exercise can prove to be time-consuming if the dispatcher’s office is not at the depot or the starting point for the driver is far away from the main office of the delivery business.

4. Difficult to Manage Last-minute Changes

Sudden changes to the delivery schedules or drivers falling in sick at the last minute can pose a big challenge for dispatchers to reassign the route to another driver.

Learn More About Centralized Dispatching

Distribute Delivery Routes Among Your Drivers in a Single Click

1. Add Drivers

You can add as many drivers to a delivery route planner. This allows you the freedom to pick drivers according to their availability, location, and vehicle capacity to fulfill the deliveries.

Add all the necessary information like email address and driver’s mobile number so their routes can be delivered to their mobile device.

2. Dispatch Routes via Email or Text

The best part about distributing routes with route planning software is how easy it is. All you have to do is choose drivers for a particular route and send the route to them through email, text, or both.

Your drivers receive a URL that they can open in their mobile browser at the time of starting the deliveries.

3. Reassigning Routes to Another Driver

In case any driver fails to show up to carry out the task, you can easily assign the same route to another driver. 

The route is already optimized. So all you have to do is pick another driver that is available and distribute the route to their mobile device. 

This way, you can fulfill your daily deliveries without any hassle.

4. Export, Take a Printout or Share The URL

If you are not sending routes using the drivers’ email or phone number, you can copy the route URL and share it across with them on any other platform.

Businesses that need to have a printed manifest just in case, can also take a printout of the route and hand it over to the driver.

In addition to this, dispatchers can export the route in CSV, XLS, or GPX formats.

Benefits of a Delivery Route Planning & Dispatching System

1. Helps Distribute Loads Efficiently

When the delivery planning system plans and dispatches your routes, there’s not much effort required from the dispatcher’s end. Once the routes are optimized according to the delivery constraints, dispatchers simply have to choose a driver to assign the route.

If one driver is not enough to carry out all the stops in the given time frame, the route planning system will ask the dispatcher to add another driver to distribute the load efficiently.

2. Dispatch Routes According to Driver Availability

Let’s say you have 40 deliveries to be done between 12 PM and 5 PM. But if most of your drivers are either out on the road or not working during that time, it would be difficult to keep track of that manually.

Upper Route Planner will nudge you to pick a driver that is available to make deliveries between 12 PM and 5 PM.

3. Re-route & Re-assign Routes Quickly

Being a dispatcher in the delivery industry means handing in last-minute driver cancellations or changes to the route. 

With real-time route optimization, you can easily re-route the stops according to the changes. If a driver cancels, re-assigning the same route doesn’t take long either. Just choose the route you want to share with the new driver and share it with them through email or text.

4. Plan & Load Delivery Vehicles in Advance

Having routes planned and dispatched on time helps your drivers carry out their loading duties much in advance. With the route in hand, drivers can do the loading of the packages according to the hierarchy of the orders to be delivered.

Also Check: How to Automate Dispatch and Delivery

Why Use Upper Route Planner to Plan and Dispatch Delivery Routes to Your Drivers?

When you have faster planning and automated one-click dispatch of routes at your disposal, you don’t need a team of dispatchers. Just one will be enough

Upper Route Planner plans, schedules, and optimizes your routes quickly. It also dispatchers your routes in a much quicker fashion. Digital dispatch of tasks makes the job easier for your dispatchers as well as drivers.

And of course, these optimized routes will also make your delivery process more efficient, with reduced wait times and increased on-time deliveries. So, what are thinking of? Just get instant access to 7 days FREE trial and start taking benefit of this software. Explore different features, functionalities, and benefits of Upper Route Planner software.