What is Route Planning? The Complete Guide for 2025

Are you a delivery or field service business owner failing to meet timelines?

Do you find it hard to maximize your fleet capacity?

Is it turning hard to ensure customer satisfaction due to poor delivery visibility and delivery exceptions?

If yes, chances are high that there’s something wrong with how you plan your routes. And you can’t afford it.

It’s because efficient route planning is indispensable for a business that involves moving goods or people across locations. 

So, what do you do?

Well, we are here to help you out with this blog. 

In this, we’ll cover: 

• What is route planning and why do you need it
• What constitutes route planning and the factors you should consider
• Which route planning tools businesses often use

What is Route Planning?

Route planning refers to finding the most efficient path to reach your destination. In logistics, it involves determining the shortest and most cost-effective routes for vehicles to visit multiple locations.

When your route planning is solid, your drivers or service agents get to travel less and, hence, cover more stops per trip. It decreases their daily fuel consumption and vehicle wear/tear while increasing their productivity. 

This gives you reduced fuel and fleet repair/maintenance costs and higher profit margins. 

So, you must understand how route planning works and what components it has. This will help optimize your field operations and achieve better outcomes.

Understand the Route Planning Process 

1. Define start and end points: 

• Clearly specify the origin and destination of the journey. 
• Consider the start and end locations as fixed points or potential starting points. 

2. Acquire vital information:

• Gather relevant data that could affect your route. They can be traffic conditions, road closures, speed limits, tolls, and any personal preferences or restrictions. 
• Consider the current date and time, as this can influence your choice of routes. 

3. Determine your mode of transportation  

• Decide on the method of transportation, such as car, train, bicycle, or walking.
• Consider any specific requirements or limitations of your chosen method.

4. Identify possible routes 

• Based on your mode of transportation, identify possible routes using maps or online mapping tools.
• Consider different routes and compare them based on factors like distance, expected travel time, and traffic conditions.

5. Analyze route options 

• Evaluate each potential route based on various factors such as distance, travel time, traffic, road conditions, safety, and personal preferences.
• Consider the benefits and limitations of each route option so you can make an informed choice. 

8. Navigation & guidance

• Use navigation tools to guide you along the chosen route.
• Consider using GPS navigation or printed maps.

9. Update and review your route

• Regularly review and update your route plan based on real-time conditions and any changes in your goals.
• Be prepared to adjust the route if necessary.

Why is Route Planning Important?

Route planning forms the cornerstone of a successful logistics business. 

There are a number of benefits that it provides.

1. Time savings

Route planning helps create the fastest and shortest routes. Plus, if you integrate real-time information on traffic or road conditions with efficient route planning, you can make quick route adjustments accordingly.

When you combine route planning with these dynamic adjustments, your employees won’t have to spend much time on the road or take long detours. Dynamic route adjustments mean you can save more time per trip.

2. Increased productivity

When you plan and optimize routes, your drivers or field agents have to travel less and complete more deliveries or work orders per day. 

More deliveries or jobs mean higher productivity and revenue. And you can achieve it with the same number of drivers or techs which improves resource utilization. 

Did you know? Upper helped Parkwood Products Ltd., a renowned door manufacturer in New Zealand, increase daily deliveries by 100% and overall productivity by 64%.

3. Reduced costs

Well-planned routes reduce the total travel distance and thus, associated fuel and vehicle maintenance costs. When your drivers travel less, there is less strain on vehicles, which minimizes breakdowns.

Moreover, avoiding traffic or accident-prone zones through optimal routes reduces the chances of collisions. When you reduce such risk factors, you can negotiate with your insurance company to lower your premiums over time. 

4. Improved customer service

In businesses like logistics and delivery, customer satisfaction matters the most. And route planning lets you ensure timely delivery or service completion to help you achieve it. 

If you implement a route planner solution, you can also track your drivers or techs in real time. It enables you to provide accurate and up-to-date ETAs to your customers so they have complete visibility into your operations, which builds trust. 

5. Lowered environmental impact

Optimally planned routes cut down on fuel consumption, which in turn decreases carbon emissions. 

It helps you make your valuable contribution to environmental sustainability. When you practice and promote your field operations as ‘green’, people start recognizing you as an eco-conscious brand, and that works in your favor. 

6. Improved decision-making

If you fail to track how your delivery or service routes perform, you can’t know what’s wrong. A good route planning solution prevents that through comprehensive reporting and analytics.  

You can use route planning software to monitor the total distance a driver traveled, their transit time, and how many stops they covered or missed. Using this data, you can find out what works well and where you need to implement improvement measures. 

7. Reduces stress

When you use an automated route planning solution to create well-planned routes, you have nothing to stress about. It’s because your software takes care of everything you need.

You don’t have to worry about routing inaccuracies that lead to unwanted extra miles or idling. You also don’t have to grapple with the idea of distributing jobs uniformly among your employees. In short, automated route planning gets you rid of imprecision and paves the way for smoother and more predictable operations.

8 Factors to Consider in Route Planning

Route planning considers several factors to achieve optimal service, sales, or delivery route planning. Let’s explore the 8 most important ones, as follows.

1. Destination

Determining your destination is a fundamental route planning aspect.

Whether there’s one or many, you must be clear about what your start and end points for a route are. This step assists your routing and ensures your employees don’t reach the wrong address.

For example, a delivery driver must have a precise address for each stop to optimize the route. It helps in two ways. First, it helps them plan a route so they can reach that address fast. Second, they don’t have to wander around asking for the exact location, which saves them time and effort.

2. Distance

The driving directions between the two points are also crucial. If you have multiple route suggestions, it would be ideal to choose the shortest and fastest route. This will help you save time and fuel.

For example, a field sales agent aiming to cover multiple appointments efficiently will prioritize optimized routes with the least distance to minimize travel time and expenses.

3. Time

Time plays a critical role in route planning. To estimate how much it will take your on-field employees to reach a destination, you must consider factors like:

• Traffic congestion
• Vehicle type
• Speed limits 

A route optimizer can analyze these factors for you and create the most efficient path based on them. It eventually saves time that you would otherwise waste planning one route at a time.

For instance, a driver with a heavy vehicle will take longer to reach the destination during peak hours. Contrarily, a delivery agent on a bike will take comparatively less time even on congested roads.

4. Road conditions

Road conditions have a significant impact on fuel economy and safety. So, you should account for factors like construction, road closures, highways, toll roads, or traffic-prone areas.

An example could be a truck driver who prefers to drive on highways and avoid busy urban streets, which slow them down and cause delays.

5. Traffic

When you have real-time data on traffic and congestion levels, you can analyze it to determine whether a route is feasible or not. If you expect delays along your planned route, you can suggest alternative routes to your drivers. 

If there’s no rush, you can look for the best time to travel and reschedule your deliveries accordingly.

While you can’t do it all manually, you can implement dynamic route planning software to help you out. 

An online route planner can integrate traffic data to see whether your usual route has heavy traffic, and recommend an alternative route if required. 

It makes your drivers’ journey smoother and faster.

Do you know Upper’s route planning software considers real-time traffic patterns to provide the most feasible rerouting suggestions and even edit the sequence of stops to minimize wasted time and increase routing efficiency by up to 30%? 

Book a Demo to See How.

6. Costs

While individual drivers may not mind it, businesses do. When you have a large fleet of trucks, you would want to save toll fees especially if it outweighs fuel costs on taking a slightly longer route.

Route planning comes in handy there, as it helps you evaluate costs associated with tolls or road-specific fees. Based on your analysis, you can consider creating some routes that avoid tolls to minimize expenses.

7. Route constraints

As a route planner, you need to consider multiple routing constraints, including one-way streets, vehicle weight/capacity restrictions, or maximum permissible speed. A dynamic route planning tool helps you handle them all and plan routes that avoid restricted roads or pathways so there are no compliance issues.

8. Safety

Safety is paramount in the route modeling process. Delivery routes should prioritize roads with good visibility, low accident rates, and adequate lighting. A navigation system might recommend a safer route with well-maintained roads, especially during adverse weather conditions. Also, provide your delivery drivers with the best delivery safety tips to enhance their safety and minimize business losses.

Route Planning Methods and Tools

There are multiple ways to plan a route. It depends on your business needs and how many service calls and deliveries you plan to complete daily.

Let’s go into the nitty-gritty of each method for a better understanding.

1. Pen and paper

This method involves planning a route manually, where you use a map, pen, and paper. It requires you to follow these steps:

• Study the map 
• Identify the desired destinations for deliveries or service calls 
• Trace the best route based on the knowledge of available information about the traffic conditions.

While you can do it offline, you may not give live traffic updates. This makes you unable to make last-minute adjustments that cause delivery delays.

2. Excel (Spreadsheet)

Many companies have used the Excel spreadsheet for decades. To plan routes, they follow the steps below: 

To plan routes, they:  

• Use some internal software, such as CRM or order-taking software, to download the list of addresses as an Excel spreadsheet.
• Arrange it in the most logical sequence based on their experiences, observations, drivers’ or service agents’ feedback, and traffic patterns on navigation apps.
• Take a printout of the finalized route plan and hand it over to individual drivers or service agents.

However, Excel requires a lot of manual manipulation and doesn’t provide instant route optimization. There is no visual map, which makes it hard to find addresses.

3. Google Maps

One of the most popular digital mapping tools is Google Maps. It offers route planning functionality using GPS data, live traffic updates, and machine learning algorithms to calculate the most cost-effective route.

Users can follow the steps below:

• Input their starting point and end point  
• Add up to 10 stops, including start and end points
• Rearrange the sequence of stops as required and click ‘Finished’ to get all the possible route options tagged with respective ETAs.
• Pick the route option that suits you best and click ‘Start Navigation’ to get turn-by-turn directions and navigation guidance. Google Maps also indicates the most fuel-efficient route, symbolized by a green leaf nowadays 

Here’s a detailed guide on How to Use Google Maps Route Planner.

4. Route planning software

This method uses route planners equipped with smart optimization algorithms to generate optimized routes. These algorithms consider factors, such as distance, time, traffic, vehicle capacity specifics, and territories for that purpose.

Upper’s route optimization software is packed with features designed to make your deliveries a breeze.

Here’s a glimpse of what sets it apart.

• No more copy-pasting! Upload all your service or delivery stops from Excel/CSV spreadsheets in one go. With smart address validation, you can save time, avoid typos, and make deliveries, services, or sales appointments faster.

• Super-quick dispatch: Are you done with designing routes perfectly? It’s time to send these optimized routes to your delivery drivers or techs in a single click. Let them instantly view their service or delivery schedule and hit the road quickly. Less time awaiting instructions means more time serving customers!

• Keep your customers happy: Upper sends automatic updates to your clients with estimated arrival times. You can customize the messages so they know precisely when to expect their order. Happy customers, better growth!

• Proof they got it: Upper helps your agents capture photos and obtain electronic signatures when they complete delivery or service jobs. This route optimizer double-checks that everything went smoothly and builds customer trust.

• See how you’re performing: Want to know what’s working and what’s not? Upper’s route summary reports give you data-driven insights so you can use them and improve your route management.

• Works with everything: Connect Upper’s route planning software to any system you use with seamless integration capabilities and establish connected workflows.

Route Planning: Your Key to Super-Efficient Routes

Route planning is a crucial process for both businesses and individuals. It helps increase service delivery efficiency and boost customer satisfaction. By considering factors like destinations, distance, time, road conditions, and traffic, effective route planning can help enhance delivery or field service operations to enhance customer experience.

Various route planning methods exist, ranging from the traditional pen-and-paper approach to technology as advanced as logistics route planning tools.

Modern driver management software like Upper offers features like automated route optimization, real-time tracking, and detailed analytics. Implementing this technology can help businesses improve efficiency, reduce costs, and enhance customer satisfaction.

If you want to experience these benefits firsthand, Upper offers a powerful, user-friendly platform with a free trial. This platform allows businesses to transform route planning and delivery/service operations.