The thing about driver schedules is that the number of permutations scales exponentially with orders—with 2 stops there’s 2 options, with 4 stops there’s 24 options, and by the time you’re talking about 12-15 stops the numbers can get into the hundreds of millions. Sure, some of those schedules your planners can identify as obvious nonsense, but as you scale up your deliveries even the savviest route planner or dispatcher will need help with scheduling.
Driver scheduling software has gotten a lot more sophisticated even in the past few years, which means that even if you’re using a routing and scheduling solution, you’re not guaranteed to be getting the most efficient routes or the best last mile performance. With AI-powered route optimization capabilities, increasingly scalable SaaS-based software, and greater connectivity between scheduling and the rest of your delivery management activities, you can turn driver scheduling into a competitive advantage and get more out of your fleet capacity than ever.
But to make that happen, you first need to find the right driver scheduling software for your business.
Obviously, the math on developing sensible last mile delivery schedules suggests part of the difficulty of getting this part of the logistics process right. But it’s not just a matter of computational complexity—there are a number of real-world considerations that make it difficult to get routing and scheduling right.
It’s not just that you need some kind of driver scheduling software. Rather, you need driver scheduling software that can cut through all those complexities like a knife through butter.
There are a handful of clear ways to tell whether your driver scheduling software is up to the task of providing you with efficient delivery routes that your drivers can actually execute on.
Here are a few key things to look for:
To borrow a phrase from a different type of transportation, frequency is freedom. When you can only run route plans once a day because the routing engine has to calculate the routes overnight, you’re pretty much stuck with whatever schedule you get in the morning. If someone’s got a last minute change or request, you have to eyeball it and risk losing out on route efficiency.
Conversely, when you have a route scheduling solution that can route thousands of stops in seconds without slowing down, you can move your routing cutoff time as late as you like. And easily adjust routes that have already been optimized—meaning that you can handle last minute orders seamlessly.
This also helps put you in a position where you can scale up your driver scheduling to meet increased levels of demand.
Everyone’s routing and scheduling needs are different, and you’re driver scheduling software needs to reflect that. How? By giving you the flexibility to generate routes that work for your needs and parameters.
You should be able to codify a number of factors within the system:
This helps you transform your driver scheduling from a process that relies on the domain knowledge of the person doing the schedule to a process that the system can handle largely on its own. This puts you in a position where your team isn’t constantly trying to rework the routes that the system spits out.
When most people these days think of AI, they picture ChatGPT and Claude—but AI technology has actually been used to improve route optimization capabilities for a number of years. By factoring in mountains of preexisting delivery data—plus historical traffic and weather patterns—AI-powered routing can achieve 98% accurate delivery ETAs while improving route efficiency and density.
This isn’t just a fringe benefit of powerful delivery technology. It can be an immediate game-changer when it comes to decreasing disruptions in your delivery schedules. When drivers are empowered with routes that are actually feasible, the number of missed stops, late deliveries, unplanned returns, and other disruptions shrink rapidly—resulting in more efficient operations overall.
One of the themes running through this piece so far has been the idea that delivery driver schedules often have to be tailored to the needs of the customer. But how can you be sure you’re doing that?
Routing doesn’t happen in a vacuum—getting it requires you to gather order data effectively and communicate with customers about delivery schedules. On the day of delivery, it requires you to stay in contact with them and potentially proactively manage exceptions if they arise.
To make that all happen, it’s crucial that your driver scheduling be integrated into your larger last mile logistics platform—rather than separated out as a standalone module.
Investing in driver scheduling software that meets all of the criteria we sketched out above might seem daunting. Change management is always a challenge, and there’s good reason to be cautious about implementing new supply chain technology in a widespread way.
But investing in the right technology can pay out rapidly in a few different ways:
When it comes to getting more out of your delivery capacity, efficient driver schedules are crucial to success. They’re the backbone of your delivery plans, and the better they are the more effectively strong delivery execution will follow.
With competition heating up across delivery markets, there’s never been a better time to uplevel your routing and scheduling capabilities. To make that happen, start by implementing the right driver scheduling software.