Planning a multi-stoppage road trip? Sounds intimidating, right? Well, it is a little. 

For comercial vehicles a little more. However, fleet management software has made it a smooth sail for fleet owners. More than just executing a multi-stop road trip, it’s the planning that involves the high level engineering and experience. With smart phones in hand and technology available in the app store, things seem easy and simple but on-ground experience also matters. Especially when we are talking about the vehicles from the commercial space. 

 

Before jumping straight to the recipe to plan a mutiple stoppage trip for commercial vehicles, let’s understand what exactly do multi-halt road trip means. 

What’s a Multi-stop Road Trip?

When a vehicle embarks on a journey from point a to point b that is one trip. If the vehicle comes back from the point B to point A then the entire loop is called the round trip. Now if you have planned a few stoppages in the middle then it becomes a multi-stop road trip. 

However, the breaks that drivers take alongteh trip are not exactly the stops or the waypoints. They may be a tiny halts for tea break or stretch their legs they aren’t stoppages. 

Now, the stops may be planned or ad-hoc, depending on the duration and the purpose of the halt. The duration of the trip my also vary from a few hours to a few weeks. 

So, why’s planning this road trip such a big deal? 

The route planning involved in the process makes all the difference. Th etrip planner must consider a few points while planning the route:

• Distance
• Condition of the road
• The waypoints
• The order of the waypoints
• Number of tolls

Ths is the most common spects that are taken into consideration. However, the list may vary depending on the purpose of the road trip and other scenarios. 

Multi-stop Route Planning on Google Maps

“So, what? 

What’s the rocket science required in this?

It’s easily feasible on Google maps!”

How? 

Go to google maps. Mention the starting location and mention the destination the next section. Then click on options(yes, those vertically placed three dots) and click on add stops. 

Keep adding the stoppages you want to take along the trip. You may rearrange the order an decide on the route that best suits your needs. 

This is what we do for our personal needs. 

Is it the best practice for commercial vehicles? Fleet owners my resort to google maps for route planning but what about the monitoring part. In order to beat the manual errors and optimise trip planning, fleet management software that come ;with advanced rout eplanning solutions come in handy. 

They not only ensure the optimised route panning but also, spot the anomalies in the process. 

Fleet Management Software for Multi-stop Route Planning

When managing hundreds of commercial vehicles daily and planning multiple trips of reach vehicle a day, imaging the amount of things to management for a fleet manager. Can a fleet manager resort to the apps like google for route planning? 

This is where fleet management software into play. Fleet management software optimize the planning part and automate the execution and reporting bit. This not only ensure accuracy but also negate the possibility of errors. 

How fleet management software offer multi-stop route planning?

That’s easy! Route planning software. I mean the answer is easy, developing route planning software isn’t easy.  The entire game is of accuracy! The higher the percentage of accuracy of data, the more reliable the software can be. TrackoBit, the leading fleet monitoring platform has managed to attain more than 99% accuracy with most of the features. 

How does multi-stop route planning work in route planning system:

• Tour Creation 

The route planning segment on the platform allows you to mention the addresses on the software and convert them into locations on teh map with the help of geocoding. Even if your put the location on the map manually or put the geo-coordinates the advanced software reverse geo-code it to show you the address. 

Like this you can put in as many waypoint you want along the trip and decide on teh their halt time. 

• Priortise the stoppages

The best part about having a to put the stoppages manually, you get to set the priority as you want. You can rearrange the sequence of the halts, keeping the high priority client first in the order. Yes, you might be compromising on the time and fuel but bigger clients get special treatment, right. 

Once the tour is planning the route that appears on the map can be saved for later use. 

• Live Tracking 

The fleet management platforms allo you to track the movement of the vehicle on the app. Along with the real-tie where abouts you also get other updates such as the real-time speed, status, the fuel and load readings and a lot more. 

• Route Deviation Alerts

Liveing tracking is one thing to ensure that teh drivers are not deviating from the route. But is it really feasible to sit infront on teh screen te entire trime an sleep an eye on every vehicle out on a trip? No, right? Therefore. TrackoBit introduced route deviation alerts in it’s route planning solution. The accuracy is bang on and every time the driver takes a detour the manager is notifies about it. Not only that, the system allows the manager to set the buffer zone to as limited as 10 meters. 

• Multi-stop ETAs

The new-age potent fleet monitoring software easily generate multiple ETAs for a single trip. Every stop has different ETA for which they consider different aspect such as the route, timing, weather condition, type of vehicle and much more. The fleet manager also has an option to share the ETA s with teh client along with teh tracking link. 

• Proof Of Delivery 

The route planning software comes with different types of proofs of delivery. E-signature, OTP and QR coded are some of the primary POD types. Other than this soem software also provide automatic PODs. Once the vehicle arrives at the destination or the delivery waypoint and the consignee collects the consignment, the system is notified by either of the prior mentioned ways. 

• Auto Trip Allocation

In case the vehicles have to take multiple round trips in a day on the same route. The fleet management system can automatically reassign the trip to vehicle after it completes the trip, until the number of trips for the day are achieved. 

• Automatic Trip Reports 

One of the biggest advantages of software backed fleet management is the automatically generated reports. The software fetches data from the vehicle and massages it to appear in the digestible form. Then the software genarates the insights in the forms of report and graphs. 

Best Route Planning Software For Multi-Stop Route Planning

The market is flooded with the flete management software. It takes sheer talent and thorough research to find a needle in the haystack. But like a true BFF we’ll guide you to the right place. TrackoBit is the top-notch fleet monitoring software that offers robust route planning solutions. Check out their software, book a free demo and get in touch with their team of experts for further details.