Pickup & Delivery in the Same Route: Reduce Extra Trips and Save Time

Imagine having to organize routes with pickup orders and delivery orders. How would you start optimizing the routes? Would you be able to do it in under a few minutes? That would be impossible, especially if you need to account for vehicle capacity, driver schedule, delivery windows, custom requests, and so many others. The solution is to combine pickup and deliveries in the same delivery route.

Businesses waste time and money when they handle pickups and deliveries separately. Extra trips mean more fuel, longer working hours, and higher costs. Drivers spend unnecessary time on the road, making the logistics operations less efficient. Let’s break down why separate routes don’t work (and when they make sense!) and how smart route planning solves the problem.

The problem with separate pickup & delivery routes

Running separate pickup and delivery routes is costly, inefficient, and complicated.

Doing a first round of pickup route, then the deliveries consume more fuel. Extra trips mean more costs and more gas. Longer routes mean more tear down on the vehicle. Drivers waste time on the road instead of being able to complete more deliveries. More miles usually mean more maintenance, downtime for the vehicle, and repair costs. Poor planning often leads to missed time slots and delays. The more trips drivers take, the less profitable the business is down the line.

The only exception to this problem is when your business is required to do all the pickups before the deliveries. For example, you’re selling fresh products, from different vendors around your area. Before going to the customers, you need to have a pickup-only route to gather all the products. Then, you will need a delivery route to go to all your customers.

Why merging pickup & delivery orders makes sense

A route with both pickup and delivery stops fixes all the problems. When done right, it will have many benefits.

From cutting fuel costs to reducing environmental impact, you can solve all these issues by simply considering both stops in the same route. You can increase the deliveries per shift, as drivers can complete more tasks in less time. By maximizing resources, you have a better use of drivers and vehicles. This improves customer service, with faster pick-ups and deliveries.

Challenges of managing a pickup & delivery route

Planning a pickup-delivery route isn’t solved just by adding stops on a map. Especially if you’re managing this manually, with pen and paper.

Such a route requires complex planning, and figuring out the best sequence for stops is time and energy-consuming. Balancing the pickups and deliveries is a tough task without using visual support, a software platform. Traffic plays an important role in planning the route, and last-minute changes happen more often than not. Managing different time windows of both the pickup location and delivery stop is an important challenge in creating the best route.

How route optimization simplifies pickup & delivery

Investing in a route optimization tool helps you solve these challenges by automating the entire planning and route optimization process.

Using Logistia Route Planner you can add your stops and specify their type (pickup or delivery). Our smart AI-powered route optimization platform analyzes all the stops to create the most efficient route. You reduce planning time, you have a very visual tool to see everything at a glance. If you need to make manual adjustments, Logistia Route Planner allows you to do them easily. And finally, you ensure on-time arrivals, take into account that a pickup occupies space in the delivery vehicle, while a delivery frees up space in the vehicle, and all while factoring in the time windows of each location, for smooth operations.

Instead of guesswork, Logistia Route Planner removes inefficiencies, manual work, and errors to help you get back your time and mental clarity. Focus on deliveries, not on hours spent on manual route planning.

Best practices for combining pickup & delivery in one route

To get the most out of optimized pickup and delivery routing, follow these best practices while using Logistia Route Planner:

Add your stops

In Logistia Route Planner you can easily add stops from different sources and specify their type: a single pickup, a single delivery, or a combination. When you optimize the route, Logistia Route Planner will analyze it and will ensure the pickup will be always before its corresponding delivery.

Real-time tracking

Monitor the progress of the routes, and the drivers’ location to adjust if any unexpected events happen. Also, by sending your customers a notification with a tracking link that shows the ETA and driver’s location, you can reduce the number of customer inquiries (like one of our customer!).

Plan around time windows

Add your stops with all the details, including time windows for pickup and delivery. Logistia Route Planner will help you create the most efficient route, keeping the ETA of each stop within the time windows.

Review performance

At the end of the day, you can review the key metrics from our Reports section. Analyze financial reports, complete routes or define your custom report to improve efficiency over time.

Conclusion

As a business, you always prioritize efficiency. So combining pickup and deliveries in the same route is a smart move, that stops you from wasting time, fuel and money. Using a route optimization software, you can complete more stops in the same working interval, save money on fuel and labor, and improve customer satisfaction with faster, more precise service.