Common routing mistakes (and what they’re actually costing you).
Most routing problems don’t announce themselves. They show up as overtime that wasn’t expected, fuel costs that crept up, and days that feel harder to manage than they should. This article identifies the small planning mistakes — repeated regularly — that compound into real cost.
7 min read
Most routing problems don't announce themselves. They show up indirectly — as overtime that wasn't expected, fuel costs that crept up, customer complaints that seem unpredictable, and days that feel harder to manage than they should.
Often the source is a small number of planning mistakes, repeated regularly. The compounding effect of these mistakes is what makes them expensive. Individually, each is manageable. Together, they erode margins and morale.
Building routes that only work if everything goes right
Overloaded routes are the most common planning mistake — and the most costly. When a route has no buffer, the first delay doesn't just affect one job: it cascades through everything that follows.
This usually starts with optimism. Job durations are estimated conservatively, traffic assumptions are best-case, and the last job is squeezed in because it 'should' fit. In practice, a delivery that takes 20 minutes on a quiet day takes 35 during a busy one. A short drive that looks fine on a map is 40 minutes during school hours.
Routes with no flex don't just run late — they pressure drivers, generate customer calls, and often cost more in overtime than the extra job was worth. Build realistic workloads, not maximum-capacity ones.
Underestimating how long jobs actually take
Job duration estimates are often set once and rarely revisited. If the initial estimates were optimistic — or if the nature of jobs has changed — every route built on those estimates will be systematically too tight.
The impact compounds: a 10-minute underestimate on each of 8 jobs produces an 80-minute overrun before any actual delays occur. Common contributors include waiting for access or signatures, parking difficulty, variable job complexity, and travel time from vehicle to door.
If you have historical data on job completion times, use it. If not, start collecting it. The gap between planned and actual duration is one of the clearest signals that planning inputs need updating.
Optimizing distance while ignoring route shape
A route can look efficient by the numbers but be deeply impractical to drive. Back-and-forth routing through the same area, or routes that create unnecessary travel in the second half of the day, waste fuel and driver time — even if total distance appears reasonable.
The right shape depends on your environment. Urban routes should cluster tightly. Regional routes should move in a clear direction. Long-haul routes need to account for how roads actually work, not straight-line distance.
A reliable signal: if drivers regularly resequenced their own jobs, the planned route shape isn't reflecting how they logically need to move.
Treating every job as equally urgent
When every job is treated the same, the jobs that matter most don't get protected. Time-critical deliveries end up late because earlier stops ran over. A priority customer gets deprioritized because nothing in the plan flags them differently.
Prioritization is a planning decision, not just an operational one. The plan itself should reflect which jobs can absorb flexibility and which cannot — so that when variance occurs (and it will), it falls on the right work.
Planning in isolation from what actually happened
Routes are often built using the same estimates, the same assumptions, and the same constraints — day after day — without incorporating feedback from execution. This is one of the most persistent and under-appreciated mistakes.
If certain jobs consistently run long, that should change the estimate. If a particular area always causes delays at specific times, that should change when it's scheduled. Planning that doesn't learn from execution is planning that makes the same mistakes on a cycle.
| Where to focus first: |
|---|
| Review average daily buffer — if routes regularly finish late, there isn't enough breathing room |
| Compare planned vs actual job durations for your most common job types |
| Ask drivers whether they frequently resequencing their stops — and why |
| Identify your most important customers and check whether the plan protects their commitments |
| Note patterns in recurring issues — these usually point to input problems, not daily bad luck |
None of these changes require a new system. They require honest assessment of where current planning is creating friction — and the discipline to address it rather than compensate for it.
| Passage | Feature to reference indirectly | How to do it |
|---|---|---|
| "Overloaded routes — a van that arrives overloaded is a planning failure" | Size Up (overload prevention, warnings appear as you plan) | "An overload caught at the depot costs nothing but time. An overload discovered at a retail dock costs the trip, the driver's day, and the customer relationship. The right point to enforce capacity limits is before the truck leaves — during planning, not after dispatch." |
| "Vehicles consistently over or underutilized — half-empty trucks waste money" | Size Up (underutilization alerts + load-factor analytics) | "Right-sizing a fleet based on intuition is expensive in both directions. Operations that track actual load factor across weight, volume, and units over six to twelve months typically discover they're operating one or two vehicles beyond what the work requires — or that they're running routes that could carry significantly more." |
| "If drivers regularly resequenced their own stops, the route shape isn't right" | Smart Planning (distance minimization + time minimization, balanced optimization) | "A driver resequencing their own route is the clearest signal that the plan's geographic logic doesn't reflect how roads and time actually work. An optimizer that checks every permutation against both distance and time — not just one — will produce routes drivers can follow without adjustment." |
| "Treating every job as equally urgent" | Smart Planning (priority sequencing) | "Priority needs to be a structural feature of the plan, not a note in a driver briefing. When the optimizer respects job priority as a hard constraint alongside distance and time windows, the most important commitments are protected by the plan itself — not by hoping the driver reads the notes." |