Route planning for shredding trucks: build days that actually fit

For a small shred company, the route is where profit is made or lost. A truck that crosses town twice, or a driver who runs out of day with three stops left, costs real money. Good routes come from good schedules, set up well before the morning of.

Start with territories

Split your service area into a few zones and give each zone regular days. When a new recurring account signs up, offer the day you're already in their area. Over time, each day of the week becomes a dense cluster of stops instead of a scatter across the map.

Match frequency to the zone

• Weekly and every-two-weeks accounts anchor a zone's day
• Every-four-weeks and monthly accounts fill in around them; 'every four weeks on Tuesday' keeps the same weekday, while 'monthly' can drift across weekdays
• On-call accounts get slotted into the zone's next regular day when they call

Leave room for the unplanned

• Hold back time each day for purges, on-call requests and missed stops from yesterday
• Know your realistic time per stop by site type. A ground-floor office is not a hospital loading dock
• Plan around holidays a few weeks ahead so recurring stops shift on purpose, not by surprise
• Off-site trucks need time to unload at the plant, and mobile trucks need time to empty

The morning routine

1. 1Review tomorrow's stops the afternoon before, not at 6 a.m.
2. 2Check for special instructions: new gate codes, a closed suite, a contact who must be present.
3. 3Put stops in a sensible order and send the route to the driver's phone.
4. 4Print a route sheet as a backup for days with bad weather or bad signal.

Measure and adjust

Once a month, look at which stops are regularly skipped, which run long, and which days overflow. Move accounts between days rather than squeezing harder. A schedule that fits on paper but not in real life gets worse every week.

How Trakro helps

Trakro generates each day's stops from your service plans, shifts them around your holidays, and sends routes to drivers' phones. Drivers work the route offline, and not-serviced stops come back to the office with a reason so they can be rescheduled.