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A fair guide for small and mid food distributors: what to compare when you shop for route planning software, and what Dock to Route does.

This page will not tell you what is wrong with any other product. We can't speak for software we don't build, and you should not trust a vendor who does. What we can do is give you a fair list of things to compare, and tell you plainly what Dock to Route does, so you can judge the fit yourself.

Who this is for

Dock to Route is built for small and mid food and produce distributors that run their own trucks out of their own dock. Think of an operation with somewhere around 10 to 60 trucks and a dispatcher who knows every store by heart. You are too big to keep running on spreadsheets and memory, and you don't want a project that needs an IT team.

If most of your freight moves on hired carriers, you may need a different kind of tool. If the trucks are yours, keep reading.

What to compare

1. Dock-first or route-first

Some tools start from the map: stops, miles and drive time. Others start from the dock: pallets, trailers and doors, and then the route. Both are fair ways to build software. Ask which one matches your problem. If your nights go wrong because a load does not fit, a door is taken, or the dock runs late, a dock-first tool will feel more natural. Ask any vendor to show you a load that hits its weight limit before it fills its floor, and see how the tool tells you.

2. Setup time

Ask how long it takes to go from signing to building your real nights. Ask what you have to do, and what they do for you. Ask whether you can run in parallel with your current process for a week before you switch.

3. Pricing model

Pricing in this space comes in many shapes: per truck, per route, per user, per module, or flat. None of these is wrong, but they grow in different ways. Ask for a quote at your size today and at your size in three years. Ask what is extra: setup, training, the driver app, more users, more trucks.

4. Who sets it up

Some tools are set up by your own team, some by a partner, some by the vendor. Ask who will load your customers, delivery windows, trucks and rules, and who you call when a rule doesn't work the way you expected.

5. Your own data, your own rules

Bring a real night of orders to every demo. Ask the vendor to build it while you watch. Ask how a late add-on gets placed, and whether the other routes move when it does. Ask how you get your data out if you leave.

What Dock to Route does

• Dock first. One click turns orders into loads that respect floor positions, cube, weight and temperature zones together. Doors, staging lanes and load order are set from the same plan.
• Your rules, enforced. Delivery windows, pairings to avoid, equipment, and stop or mileage caps are rules the optimizer obeys. You write them in plain English.
• Live all day. An add-on lands on the cheapest legal truck and the other routes don't move.
• More than routes. Vendor dock booking, yard and gate, a driver app with proof of delivery, and the cost of every load are in the same system.
• One flat price. $999 a month with everything included. Nothing is charged per truck, per stop or per seat.
• We set it up. Setup and data migration are done with you, free. We import your customers and fleet from your spreadsheets and set the engine to how you actually load.
• No contract. It is month to month. You can run a week in parallel with your current process, and you don't start paying until it runs your real days.

Your orders come in as the spreadsheet or CSV your current system exports, so you don't rip anything out.

The fair test

The best way to compare is with your own freight. Send the same night of orders to each vendor you are looking at, and line up the results: trucks used, miles, how full each trailer is, and whether every window was met. If your current plan already beats ours, we will tell you that too.

Roadnet and Descartes are trademarks of their owners. Dock to Route is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to them.