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Building and Optimizing Routes

The Route Builder turns a day's scheduled pickups into an ordered route for one driver and one truck. Open it with View Routes or Create Route from Pickup Management.

Set up the route​

At the top of the builder, choose:

  • Route Date — the day the truck goes out
  • Driver — who will run the route
  • Vehicle — which truck

The Create & Publish button stays disabled until you have a driver, a vehicle, and at least one stop.

Add pickups to the route​

The left panel lists Available Pickups — scheduled pickups for the chosen date that aren't on a route yet. Use the search box to filter by donor name, address, city, or confirmation number.

Click a pickup to add it to the Route Stops panel on the right. Each stop card shows the donor, address, item count, and the donor's time window. Remove a stop with its trash icon — it returns to the Available Pickups list.

tip

A pickup only appears in Available Pickups when it's scheduled for that date and its address has been matched to a map location. If a pickup you expect is missing, open its detail page and check for an unresolved-address warning.

Optimize the stop order​

With at least two stops and a vehicle selected, click Optimize. The optimizer re-sequences the stops into an efficient driving order and adds an ETA and approximate drive time to each stop card. The summary bar at the bottom updates with the stop count, total items, estimated duration, and — after optimizing — Capacity Used, the percentage of the truck's capacity the load takes up.

Excluded pickups​

The optimizer may drop stops it can't fit — because of truck capacity, time windows, or distance. When that happens:

  • A warning panel titled Excluded by optimizer appears below the stops, listing each excluded pickup with the reason.
  • Excluded pickups go back to the Available Pickups list. You can re-add them manually (they'll stay even if not optimal), put them on another route, or reschedule them for another day.

Reorder stops yourself​

You don't have to accept the optimized order:

  • Drag and drop a stop card to a new position, or
  • Use the up and down arrow buttons on each stop card — handy on a keyboard or touchscreen.

Stops renumber automatically as you move them.

Create and publish the route​

  1. Click Create & Publish.
  2. Optionally give the route a name (for example "Morning Route - North"). The name appears beside the route number everywhere the route shows up — the route details page, the builder's route lists, the scheduling calendar, and the driver's app.
  3. Confirm the date, driver, vehicle, stop count, and item total, then click Create & Publish Route.

If you haven't optimized (or you rearranged stops after optimizing), the confirmation shows a Route not optimized notice: an unoptimized route publishes with the stops in exactly the order shown, and won't carry drive-time estimates or an ETA. Click Optimize First to close the dialog and run the optimizer so you can review the new order, or click Publish In This Order to keep the order you set — useful when you've hand-arranged the stops on purpose.

Publishing puts the route on the driver's dashboard for that day, and each assigned driver receives an email with the route details — date, stop count, truck, and starting point — plus an Open your route button that takes them straight to the route in the driver app.

Reorder an existing route​

If routes already exist for the selected date, a Reorder an existing route card appears near the top of the builder. Use it to change the visiting order of the remaining stops on a route that's already been created — even one a driver has started.

  1. Select the route (listed by route number, stop count, and status) and click Reorder Stops.
  2. In the dialog, drag stops or use the arrow buttons to change the order. Stops the driver has already reached are locked in place and can't be moved.
  3. Click Save Order. Drivers see the new order the next time their route refreshes.

If the route changes while you're reordering — for example the driver starts a stop — the list refreshes and asks you to review your changes before saving again.

Reviewing completed routes​

The Route Builder shows today's and upcoming routes. To review routes that have already finished — across all your drivers — click Completed Routes in the Route Builder header. This is the history view: it isn't limited to today, so you can confirm a driver finished a route days or weeks ago.

Filter the list by driver and by a completed-on date range. Each row shows the route's name and number, its date, the driver, the truck, and how many stops were completed; click any row to open the full route details (stops, photos, signatures).

This is the place to check "did my driver finish their route?" as an admin — the Driver Dashboard only ever shows the logged-in driver's own routes, so an admin looking there sees their own (empty) list, not the fleet's.