Fuel businesses are looking to get a competitive edge to meet the increasing customer needs. They wish to save their time, space and money along with keeping their inventory low. And achieving these goals can be only possible when you plan the shortest possible routes for your fuel deliveries.
Creating fast delivery routes is extremely important for your fuel delivery business, as they are critical to providing a positive customer experience. But it is very challenging to build the best delivery route that meets all of your requirements, along with enabling you to run a profitable business. But, with the right technology and processes in place, you can definitely achieve this goal.
You should optimize your delivery routes in such a way that it takes minimal time. Apart from this, there are other things to consider when planning routes, such as priority stops, real-time changes, time constraints, and more. And cutting edge online route planners can help you achieve this goal.
In this blog, we will show you the bottlenecks that you may face while planning the route for your fuel deliveries. Besides this, we will also provide you with a complete guide to route optimization that can help you save time and money with route planning. So let’s start without further ado.
What is route optimization?
Route Optimization refers to finding the shortest and cost-effective route between any two points. However, the parameters to find the best routes are different. For some, it is about coping up with traffic hours and for others, it would be cost-effectiveness and convenience.
Businesses can use route planning apps to cut down the time consumed for deliveries when there are multiple stops. Besides this, they should consider dynamic complexities like vehicle capacity, saving fleet fuels, delivery time window, driver schedules, and other such things.
After getting an idea about what route optimization means, let us look at the problems which a fuel delivery business may face while planning their delivery routes.
5 major bottlenecks in route planning
Managing a fleet of fuel delivery vehicles is not a child’s play as it comes with its own set of challenges. However, this task has now become easier with real-time delivery tracking software. However, you first need to understand a few bottlenecks that hinder you while planning your fuel delivery routes:
Errorsome route optimization
Vehicle routing problems deal with vehicles, drivers, depots, roads, and customers. Also, you can face issues with accommodating your fleets, prevent unexpected breakdowns, and increase in delayed orders.
Apart from this, you have a fleet of vehicles, a team of drivers, and several parcels to be delivered from one or more depots. And to manage this you need to add numerous components into your fuel delivery tracking system. However, the more components you add, the more complicated the problem will be.
Problems with time window
The major problem with introducing specific time windows is that it adds a layer of complexity that requires additional attention when optimizing a route to be as efficient as possible.
Time window doubles the work involved in the route planning process as you first need to assign time-sensitive parcels as per the delivery vehicles, and design a delivery route that accommodates each time window. If you discover that parcel on the same vehicle conflict, you’re back to square one.
Furthermore, you cannot meet time windows, problems like refused deliveries, unsatisfied customers, poor reviews, and cancelled contracts are sure to follow.
Late and untimely deliveries
This is a very common phenomenon taking place wherein so many packages get delayed in a day leading to by a couple of days. This is one of the major problems faced by fuel retailers today.
Untimely and late deliveries often create issues for the last-mile delivery services. There are several factors which could create a delay in the delivery timeline and interrupt your schedule, but even if the delay isn’t your fault, it could make your customer unhappy and frustrated.
Unnecessary fuel consumption
Since you are using an offline fleet management software, the last-mile delivery operations have to be conducted in an old-fashioned way. For instance, when the driver sets out for fuel delivery, he can take the delivery route based on a random guess. Maybe, this random route may be lengthy or incorrect.
This can lead to reckless fuel consumption, which can cost you heavily. Apart from this, there are some other challenges that can have some hazardous financial repercussions.
Problem with vehicle’s capacity
Fuel is one of those things which are in constant demand. So, if a fuel delivery business wants to earn better profits than it should focus on fulfilling more and customer demands.
But in the case of a traditional fuel delivery service, it may happen that the vehicles in your fleet cannot support the large quantity of fuel. Also, they may not have proper facilities to store the fuel.
Because of these two limitations of fleet vehicles, you need to increase the number of vehicles in your fleet. It may create an unnecessary burden on your business profits.
Optimize delivery routes efficiently with advanced route planning software
Planning efficient routes helps you to minimize expenses which are virtually impossible for fuel delivery businesses to achieve with manual planning. Many of the route planning issues are thoroughly documented logistical problems that have existed since widespread delivery.
Solving these problems brings great confidence that your business is operating with great efficiency. Here the remarkable benefits of route planning for your on-demand fuel delivery business:
Automatised dispatch process
A fuel delivery route planning solution comprises auto-dispatch technology present for the last mile deliveries. It helps you to allocate or assign new orders to the right driver, at the right place, and at the right time.
Along with this, an automatic dispatch technology uses special algorithms that match the fuel delivery requests to the nearby drivers. You can use such algorithms for request allocation once they have created batches.
Fewer maintenance costs
If your fleet vehicles are being used efficiently, there are fewer chances of wear and tear. And the best way to do this is to limit the amount that you spend on repairs.
By integrating a route planner solution into your fuel delivery business, you get informed of critical situations that arise during the delivery. Besides this, you have prior knowledge of poor road conditions so that you can limit the chances of vehicle damage by avoiding such routes.
In this way, if you can run fewer vehicles more efficiently, and still make the same amount of deliveries with route optimization software, you will save a good amount of money in the long run.
Provide accurate analysis of data
All the fuel deliveries contain important data and insights. If you are managing your fuel delivery business traditionally, then chances are there that you cannot get an accurate picture of your business.
That is why you should migrate to a groundbreaking fuel delivery platform that offers you accurate data to help you make a well-informed decision. A good route optimisation system will not only manage operations in real-time but also help you compare actual delivery routes with the optimised ones in terms of analytical statistics and figures so that you can optimize the routes better.
Reduction in paperwork
Keeping track of your driver’s daily activities is essential for businesses. The fuel delivery tracking app maintains drivers’ daily log and monitors their performance for each day.
You need to keep proof of every activity that is done for better functioning of your business. And with a robust fuel delivery tracking system in place, you do not have to maintain a gigantic pile of papers.
Moreover, dynamic route optimization software can allow your drivers to prevent potential delivery mistakes such as filling the wrong quantity or making an incorrect fuel delivery. It offers you amazing GPS capabilities that associate multiple locations with an account to stop costly accidents and can also limit human error.
Get update about your driver’s location
Now you can effortlessly track your drivers with the help of the real-time tracking feature. This feature will provide you with information about where your drivers are at any point in time.
Furthermore, you can access a detailed list of stops and drivers. Besides this, you can figure out the best way to distribute your routes by ensuring that each one of them is optimal. Apart from this, you can then share these routes with your drivers, who access them via their on-demand app.
Apart from this, you can update your customers for adjustment on the delay, which eventually improves your customer service. Overall, the real-time tracking feature enables you to re-assimilate your day-to-day operations, boost customer experience, and eliminate unnecessary steps in making fuel deliveries.
Equal distribution of workload
Increased workload is a major issue that the fuel industry faces when it comes to logistics. This has created the demand for experienced and specialized drivers who can manage any type of implication in fuel delivery. Thus the fuel delivery company should recruit only those drivers who are well versed in handling hazardous materials.
Because of high demand and limited supply, there are only a few drivers that are capable of completing exorbitant fuel delivery requests. Managing the fleet manually can create multiple complexities, such as constantly changing government guidelines, driver shortage, insufficient truck capacities and the large volume of on-demand fuel deliveries.
You might think that hiring more drivers would solve the problem, but it would increase the logistics operations cost and the number of inexperienced drivers. The only solution to overcome these hurdles is to leverage the route optimization technology.
A route optimization software becomes a great saviour as it automates the assigning of fuel deliveries. It considers several factors for assigning tasks like traffic, driver shortage, temperature, truck capacity, risk zone, and many.
Conclusion
The route optimization software will surely witness tremendous growth in the future. However, much of its demand will show a stark rise in the fuel and gas industry. It is the best time to plan the future of your fuel delivery business around route optimization software to ensure you make the most out of it to grow your business.
You can save time and fuel. In addition, you can also make more money. A route optimization software guarantees you the most efficient delivery routes. With more efficient routes, your drivers will also be able to visit more customers in minimal time. That means you can expand your business without hiring additional driving staff.
So, what are you waiting for? Just reach to GasSwift to make a robust route tracking solution for your fuel delivery business. Hope this blog has guided you properly about the importance of route optimization in fuel delivery. Thanks for reading this blog.
