💡TL;DR: Use the Routific for Google Maps Chrome browser extension to optimize multi-stop routes with just one click.
If you want to find the fastest route from point A to point B, Google Maps is a good choice. It’s free, fast, and user-friendly for all technical skill levels. It’s one of the best route planning tools for simple scenarios, with turn-by-turn directions and live traffic updates.
But Google Maps was never designed for complex multi-stop route planning. We’re talking about the situation that delivery drivers, couriers, service technicians, and other professional drivers face every day, when they have a list of 20 or 30 different visits to make.
Now it’s not about the route from A to B, but rather A to B to C to D and so on, until we’ve covered every stop. The higher the number of stops, the less useful Google Maps becomes.
The rules are:
- Routes must be 10 stops or less (although you can get around this using the website More than 10).
- You can manually re-order stops to get a more efficient route.
- You can only plan for one driver at a time.
- If you’re a business, you can’t factor in constraints like delivery time windows.
Can Google Maps optimize a route with multiple stops?
Google Maps is not a route optimization tool. You can use it to plan a multi-stop route, and to find the shortest route between any two stops, but it was never designed to find the optimal order of all the stops to give you the most efficient route.
At best, you can try to DIY basic route optimization in Google Maps route planner. Once you’ve added your addresses, you can rearrange them until you find a good order for visiting each stop. That will give you better results — but Google can’t provide the stop order for you.
The optimization of stop order is one of the key differences between delivery route optimization software and simple web mapping services like Google Maps.
What’s the difference between a route plan and an optimized route?
A route plan is just a list of destinations you’re going to visit. It may include driving directions and estimated travel times. An optimized route arranges the destinations in the most efficient order, so your travel distance and time are minimized.
How to optimize a route using Google Maps
Ok, so Google Maps is not a delivery route planner, or a route optimizer — but what if you want to use it anyway? There are three ways, depending on how many stops you want to optimize:
- 10 stops or less
- 10-25 stops
- More than 25 stops
Optimize up to 10 stops in Google Maps
The easiest way to do this is using the Google Maps Route Optimization Chrome extension. Just add it to your browser and you’ll have one-click optimization at your fingertips whenever you want it.
Optimize 10-25 stops in Google Maps
The website More Than 10 has a great workaround for the 10-stop limit in Google Maps:
- Open two or three different Google Maps tabs.
- Add up to 10 different stops in each tab.
- Copy and paste the URL for each tab into the More Than 10 page.
- Copy and paste the resulting combined URL back into Google Maps.
- Now you can use the Routific Chrome extension to optimize your routes.
Note that our Chrome extension has a limit of 25 stops.
Optimize more than 25 stops in Google Maps
This is where things start to get complicated! But many small delivery businesses manage with Google Maps alone, so it’s possible, if you’re prepared to put in some effort. Here’s how to get it done.
(Note this is a quick version of our tutorial — if you want more detail, check out our separate post on how to plan a delivery route with Google Maps.)
Keep in mind that you can’t plan multiple routes at the same time. You’ll need to plan your routes in batches.
1. Create driver territories and assign stops
If you have more than one driver, cluster your stops into driver territories. This can be done using postal codes, or by dividing the city up into neighborhoods or zones like north, south, east, and west. Aim for clusters of 25 stops each.
💡 The easiest way to do this is using a spreadsheet. Try our free delivery route spreadsheet template.
2. Build routes in batches
Once you have your stop clusters, you can build a route for each cluster.
Use the same process as for optimizing 10-25 stops — add your stops to Google Maps, use More Than 10 to combine them all, then run the Routific for Google Maps Chrome extension to optimize each route.
You will end up with an optimized route for each cluster. It can be hard to keep track of all your Google Maps tabs while you’re doing this! Try using tab groups to keep each route separate and organized.
3. Dispatch routes to drivers
Google Maps gives you two options for sharing routes:
- You can send a route via email or SMS
- Get a link to share using any messaging app or email.
Drivers can then easily open the routes in the Google Maps app on their Android phone or iPhone.
When to use a proper route optimizer
Once you’ve hit the limits of Google Maps, planning efficient routes becomes very time-consuming and prone to human errors. A delivery business commonly spends a couple of hours in Google Maps just for one route plan. That can get very costly in a small business! So saving time is one reason to use decent route planning software that includes route optimization.
A proper multi-stop route planner will also help you solve other problems that many delivery managers face:
1. You have routing constraints
- Time windows: Your customer wants their delivery to arrive within a certain timeframe (e.g. between 2pm and 4pm).
- Driver shift times and breaks: Your driver’s shift time needs to be incorporated into the route and/or tracked. Or your driver takes a break that needs to be accounted for.
- Vehicle loads: You need to pay attention to how much a delivery vehicle can carry.
- Stop distribution and route assignment: You need a solution that evenly distributes stops across your fleet of drivers, looks for the minimum number of drivers required, or assigns routes to the best or nearest driver.
- Driver & vehicle prerequisites: You need to assign a driver with a specific skill-set or customer relationship to a stop. Or you need a certain vehicle (e.g. refrigerated) to handle a specific stop.
2. You need to manage the rest of the delivery operation
There is more to managing a delivery business than planning optimal routes. Route planners often begin looking for alternatives to Google Maps when they encounter problems related to fleet management, delivery experience, and internal operations. Delivery businesses of all sizes tend to look for software solutions that offer functionality like:
- Live route progress: To manage deliveries efficiently you need to be able to track driver locations, see if they’re sticking to their routes, ensure they’re on target for the ETAs communicated to your customers, and know when a problem is happening.
- Customer status updates: There’s been a massive shift in consumer expectations since Uber, Amazon, and others brought new technologies to the delivery space. Modern route optimization platforms can automatically communicate ETAs to customers by email, via SMS text messages or even via live tracking links.
- Proof of delivery: Capturing a signature or photograph as proof of delivery gives a delivery business legal protection and helps customers identify who collected the package, and at what time.
- Driver mobile apps: Android and iOS apps that can easily be downloaded from an app store make it easy to dispatch routes to drivers, and for them to manage their routes on their phones.
Benefits of route optimization software
Our interviews with Routific users have shown that a delivery business can reduce its driving time by up to 40%, and route planning time by up to 95%, by using delivery route optimization software.
Plan routes in minutes, not hours
Let’s start with time-savings for the person doing the planning work. There’s an easy way to estimate the financial value of this time: Multiply the hours spent on route planning by your hourly wage. Now think about how else you could spend those hours — maybe on winning new customers or developing new products — and the monetary value of those tasks.
Since route optimization software can reduce route planning time down to a couple of minutes, this is one of the most immediately recognizable impacts for planners who use manual or semi-manual routing methods.
Lower costs to increase profitability
Poor route planning costs money! There’s one key performance indicator that explains this: cost per delivery.
Cost per delivery is simply your wages + fuel costs for a period, divided by the number of deliveries you make in that period. The more deliveries you can make, the more your cost per delivery comes down and the closer you are to profitability.
Route optimization has become particularly important to delivery businesses because of ever-increasing competition in the market space. The basic requirement for profitability is that revenues must exceed costs — but delivery businesses don’t have a lot of room to raise their prices. In fact, research by Morgan Stanley points out that the biggest reason potential customers do not opt for delivery is because of the price. That leaves delivery companies with nowhere to go but to lower their costs by operating as efficiently as possible.
Marc Kuo is the Founder & CEO of Routific, a route optimization platform for growing delivery businesses. Our mission is to green the planet by reducing the mileage and fuel consumption of delivery fleets. With over a decade of experience in the last-mile industry, he has advised hundreds of delivery businesses on their route planning and delivery operations.
