What your driver will answer if asked to choose the delivery route? Obviously, he would prefer the highway over the road. The reason for this choice is that the city road is full of problems such as traffic congestion, roadblock, or unexpected diversions which makes it hard for the drivers to deliver fuel. Due to this, you may have to bear exorbitant fuel costs.
Also, fuel costs can impact the operating budget of the fleet. So if your fuel cost keeps on changing then it’s time for you to tighten your spending on the fuel of your fleet as every inch of fuel costs saved will result in the profitability of your on-demand fuel delivery service. That is why you need to use route planning software. It considers all the delivery constraints like traffic congestion, long turns, and intersections.
Route planning becomes important when it comes to making cost-effective deliveries. But planning your delivery routes is not an easy task. In this blog, we will show you how route planning can help you to save fuel costs along with its benefits.
Top Benefits of a route planning software
Delivery businesses have to cover several points while making deliveries. Also, there are multiple routes to reach a particular location. Some routes are long and some routes are short and easy. Thus, the choice of an effective delivery route becomes important. This is where the route planning software comes into the picture.
A route planning software uses complex algorithms for route optimization. Also, it can be used to plan the delivery stoppages. Furthermore, a route optimization software considers offers you several benefits:
1. Enhanced safety
Safety becomes a top priority while planning the delivery routes. By using route planning software, admins can plan their delivery routes better so there’s no more unnecessary wastage of time. Minimal time on roads means better safety.
Read more: Start an on-demand fuel delivery business in your region?
When your drivers are on the road, they have to take many turns. Due to these tricky turns, the chances of delays and accidents get increased. But you can avoid such incidents by using route planning software. A route planning software automatically chooses the route with less distance after the entry of location by the driver.
2. Better revenues
Who doesn’t want to earn better revenues in the business? If you are also looking to generate high revenues then you think of using an efficient route planning software into your business.
A route optimization software mainly focuses on reducing the time spent by vehicles on the road. When your vehicles are not on the road frequently, your maintenance costs will decrease and the functional time gets reduced as vehicles are in service for a longer time. Thus, your vehicles wear out slowly which means lower premiums and replacement costs.
3. Higher productivity
An advanced route planning software provides you with a real-time tracking feature that can be used to monitor your driver’s activities. You can know where your drivers are stopping unnecessarily. Also, you can ascertain whether your drivers are using lengthy delivery routes. Thus, by monitoring your driver activities, you can easily remove the bottlenecks in deliveries and improve the productivity of your drivers.
4. Great customer experience
A route planning software allows you to provide a great experience to the customer by suggesting you the best route for delivery. So, now your customer does not have to keep waiting for their deliveries.
You can allow your customers to track their deliveries in real-time. Also, the customer can get updates on their phones about the changes done in the delivery routes or timings.
How route planning software can cut down your fuel costs?
Providing a consistent delivery service and making supply chain and logistics operations cost-effective are two major challenges that delivery businesses are meddling with. But it is not easy to solve both of these issues. Hence they need to embrace an innovative technology such as route planning software that minimizes the delivery delays. Here is how a route planning software can help you to curtail fuel costs:
1. Automatic route planning
It becomes time-consuming to plan the delivery routes manually. But with a route planning software, you can do this planning in just a few minutes. This software contains features that can do lengthy and complicated calculations in less time and with great accuracy. Thus, you don’t have to waste much time in planning and managing delivery routes.
Apart from these, drivers can get higher earnings by making more deliveries. This will ultimately allow you to do more business with your customers.
2. Reduces idle costs
Idling of vehicles is one of the obstacles to route planning. Unnecessary idling wastes fuel due to which you may incur high costs. However, you can reduce this idle time by integrating advanced route planning software into your business.
A route planning software sends you a notification while your vehicle is idle so that you can assign deliveries to your drivers. Also, it helps you to manage driver behaviour by providing you with an accurate and customizable report about the idle times of your drivers. It helps you to stop fuel wastages.
3. Increases number of daily jobs
Every retailer wants their driver to complete more deliveries on a given day. However, you would have to ensure that your drivers do not leave jobs due to an increase in deliveries can increase their workload. That is why you should think of using a robust route planning software for making deliveries.
Route planning software uses real-time tracking tools that enable the admin to optimize the route in such a way that it can reduce both the service costs and timings. Thus, the admins can assign more jobs to the drivers as the delivery timings get decreased.
4. Upgrades the fleet capacity
Nowadays, customers do not think much about the delivery mode but they are mainly concerned about the time of delivery. And with the tremendous increase in orders, businesses need to make more delivery at the same time.
Read more : Fuel Delivery App Technology Stack
To combat this issue, many companies decide to increase the number of fleets. However, this increase in the number of fleets can affect your budget. Instead, you need to fill up your vehicle as per its capacity and plan routes accordingly. By doing so, you can have limited fleets on the road which means lesser fuel consumption.
5. Lessens Fleet management costs
If your vehicle needs frequent repairs that can adversely affect your deliveries. These repairs can incur you high costs that can decrease your profits. That is why you need to manage your fleets carefully so that you do not have to bear the burden of high costs.
However, you can minimize fleet management costs by using route management software. By using this software, you can make efficient deliveries, get better service, and pick up calls. This can lead to minimal wear and tear of vehicles which ends up in an increased mileage of vehicles.
Final Words
Delivery businesses and logistics companies are finding ways to reduce the fuel costs of their fleet. And they can achieve this goal by making an advanced on-demand delivery solution.
Due to this, their deliveries become more consistent, transparent and cost-effective. Also, your delivery route gets shortened due to which your drivers can make more deliveries. Apart from this, your driver will not have to sit idle now as they would have enough work on hand.
I hope you find this blog insightful. Feel free to reach us if you want to know more about the route planning software