Route planning for food distributors

Delivery windows, cold freight, multi-stop loads, backhauls, trucks that run more than once a day, and a plan that keeps changing. Here is how to plan for all of it.

Route planning for a food distributor is not the same as planning a parcel route. Your stops have tight receiving hours, your freight has to stay cold, your trucks carry many customers' pallets at once, and the plan changes after it is made. Here is what makes it hard, and what good software should do about it.

Delivery windows and receiving hours

Most of your customers can only take a truck at certain times. A grocery store may receive from 4 to 9 AM. A restaurant may want you before the lunch rush, and not during it. Some stores have two windows in one day with a break in the middle.

A good plan treats those windows as rules, not wishes. If a window can't be met, the software should say so before the truck leaves, not after the store calls.

Temperature

Frozen, chilled and dry freight often ride on the same truck. That means the route has to fit the trailer's zones, and the load has to fit the route. A stop that needs frozen can only go on a truck that can carry frozen. Time on the road matters too: the longer a route runs, the longer the doors open and close on the cold box.

Multi-stop loads

One truck may serve ten or more customers. Every stop's pallets have to fit, and they have to go on in the right order: the last stop loads first, at the nose, and the first stop loads last, at the tail. A route that looks short on a map is no good if the load does not fit or the driver has to dig for pallets at every stop.

Backhauls

A truck that comes home empty is a missed chance. If a vendor is on the way home, the truck can pick up product and save a separate trip. Planning backhauls means knowing which truck finishes near which vendor, and when.

Trucks that run 2 to 4 runs a day

When stops are close to the warehouse, one truck and driver may run two, three or four loads in a day. The truck goes out, comes back, gets reloaded and goes out again. To plan that well you need to know when each run gets back, how long the reload takes, and how many hours the driver has left.

Live changes during the day

No plan survives the day as written. A customer adds an order. A driver calls out. A product is short. A storm slows the highway. The question is how much of the plan has to move. If every change means rebuilding the whole day by hand, your dispatcher becomes the software.

What good route planning software does

• Builds loads and routes together. It checks floor spots, cube, weight and temperature zones while it plans the stops, so every route is a load that fits.
• Obeys your rules. Delivery windows, customers who can't share a truck, equipment needs, and stop or mileage caps are rules it can't break.
• Plans more than one run per truck. It works out which truck runs which load and in what order, with time to reload in between.
• Finds backhauls. It shows which truck can swing by which vendor on the way home.
• Handles changes without starting over. A late order goes onto the best truck that can legally take it, and the rest of the plan stays put.
• Shows the cost. Every load shows its miles, how full it is and what it costs.
• Closes the loop with drivers. Drivers report deliveries, shorts and refusals from their phones, so the office knows what happened without a phone call.

How Dock to Route does it

Dock to Route was built for this kind of day. One click turns orders into legal loads that respect floor positions, cube, weight and temperature zones together. Delivery windows are hard rules, and one rule can hold more than one window, like a store that closes for lunch. You write each rule in plain English, and if two rules clash, it tells you which two.

It plans trucks that run more than once a day, with your limits for runs per truck, reload time and hours. It shows backhaul options, which truck swings by which vendor on the way home. Drive times are layered with the weather, so a storm pads the times before the trucks leave.

During the day you edit live. An add-on lands on the cheapest legal truck, and the other routes don't move. Drag a stop between trucks and the plan checks itself again. Drivers use a private link on their phone, with no app to install, to report each stop with proof of delivery, and it keeps working through dead zones. Your customers can get a tracking link for their own stop.

It all runs for one flat price of $999 a month, everything included, and we set it up with you for free.