The rising cost of running a trucking company has increased making it imperative for smaller fleets to find cost-cutting measures. Truck drivers face difficulty planning routes that minimize wasted time and gas to maximize earnings. After all, sloppy truck route planning leads to late deliveries, higher operational costs, and reduced profits.
Route4Me commercial routing helps you plan and optimize routes for commercial vehicles. By integrating route planning, optimization, dispatch, and navigation, Route4Me ensures seamless continuity from the minute you start planning a route until the moment the driver finishes traveling it.
It can be tempting for smaller fleets to use a free route planning service like Google Maps to overcome these obstacles. Even though navigation apps like Google Maps or Waze might be helpful, they aren’t the best choice for finding the most efficient truck routes.
Google Maps has multiple navigation modes but doesn’t have a truck navigation option suitable for truck routing.
It can still be helpful to drivers, but not as a trucker GPS app for navigation.
The Difficulties of Route Planning
Planning routes isn’t just about ensuring trucks get from one place to another. It’s a complicated process with many obstacles. When truck routes aren’t optimized, a few natural things can happen:
Inability to arrive at the destination at the expected times (ETAs)
Not taking into account crucial delivery process elements, such as cargo type, vehicle size, and current weather and road conditions, are common causes of poorly planned routes. Failure to account for such factors not only creates delivery delays but also can result in missing promised delivery dates and times.
Higher fuel consumption
There is a relationship between the lack of route optimization and increased fuel usage. Finding the most efficient routes, on the other hand, enables firms to reduce the amount of gasoline consumed at each stop by reducing the distance that trucks are required to travel. Idling time for trucks can be significantly reduced with the help of a practical route planner.
Lower available capacity
Without the best routes between destinations, you may make fewer deliveries per day. This might lead to instances where you assume you need more trucks to handle order quantities when you really need better truck routes.
A truck route planner assists with these issues. A solution that uses AI, machine learning, and real-time data can help you determine the best routes, provide precise ETAs, and improve delivery efficiency.
Does Google Maps make sense for truck drivers?
Google Maps is used by many people who occasionally drive to discover the most efficient route. However, there is a significant gap between driving a truck for a living and operating a vehicle for one’s recreational interests.
When planning the route of a commercial truck, in addition to the typical driving limits, you need to consider the vehicle’s dimensions, the heights of any overpasses, the widths of the roads, and any other trucking-specific parameters.
Updated February 3, 2024
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