Route Planner

Delivery route planning: a practical guide for couriers and drivers

Updated · 6 min read

A delivery day isn't won on the road; it's won in the ten minutes before you leave. Drivers who plan well don't drive faster. They drive less, wait less and come back to fewer failed deliveries.

Here is a simple routine that works whether you carry 20 parcels or 150.

Before you leave: get every stop in

Collect all of today's stops in one place first. Typing 100 addresses by hand is slow and full of mistakes, so use whatever your stops arrive as:

  • A spreadsheet or app export: copy the address column and paste it in one go.
  • Printed labels: scan them with your phone's camera instead of typing.
  • A message from the office: paste the list straight from the chat.
  • Regular customers and the depot: save them once and add them in one tap.

Put the stops in the right order

Don't order stops by postcode or by gut feeling; let an optimizer do it, then apply what you know. The optimizer is good at geometry, and you know that the loading bay closes at noon or that one street is a nightmare at school time.

  • Lock the stops that must be first or last (the depot, a collection).
  • Give time windows to customers who aren't always in.
  • Mark urgent parcels as priority so they're delivered early.
  • Set a realistic service time per stop; two to five minutes is typical.

Plan for traffic, not just distance

The shortest route in kilometres is often not the fastest in a city. Optimize for time with traffic, and set your real start time: a 7 am run and an 11 am run can produce different orders. On quiet roads, optimizing for distance can save fuel.

On the road: keep the plan alive

  • Mark each stop as you go: delivered, failed (with the reason) or skipped.
  • Take a photo where the parcel was left; it settles most 'never arrived' claims.
  • If a customer asks you to come back later, move the stop instead of re-planning the whole day.
  • When a new stop is added, optimize again from where you are.

After the last drop

Export a short report with each stop's status, time and photo. It's useful for your employer, for disputes and for your own records of distance driven. If you drive similar routes every week, run yesterday's route again instead of starting from scratch.

A quick checklist

  1. All stops in one list, and the count matches the manifest.
  2. No pins in odd places; addresses without numbers have a pin and a note.
  3. Start and end set; locked, priority and time-window stops marked.
  4. Optimized for time with your real start time.
  5. Phone charged and the navigation voice on.

The free way to do it

Route Planner covers this whole routine for free, without a stop cap or an account: paste, scan or dictate your stops, optimize with live traffic, drive with voice guidance, keep photo proof and export a PDF or CSV report at the end of the day.