The Hidden Cost of Manual Planning: Why Use a Routing App?

When business and non-profit owners and managers manually plan routes for deliveries, pick-ups, and service calls, they aren’t usually thinking about the hidden costs of doing so. If those fleet owners and managers calculated how much it costs to plan routes manually for their fleet vehicles, they would immediately implement an affordable and powerful delivery route app like EasyRoutes.

Wasted Time is Expensive

When business and non-profit owners and managers spend hours each day or the night before manually planning routes for the following day’s deliveries, pick-ups, or service calls, they are wasting time that can never be recovered.

That time could have been better spent on things like business planning and strategy, customer outreach, and marketing, to name a few.

Owners and managers who spend time in the evenings planning the next day’s routes are missing out on time with their families.

When you use a delivery route app like EasyRoutes to optimize your routes, you’ll save about 34% of the time you’d spend manually planning them.

EasyRoutes customers regularly report saving an average of 2-3 hours per week, 8-12 hours per month, and a whopping 96-144 hours per year.

This means that manual route planning wastes as much as 144 hours per year! For a business owner or manager, that’s a loss of two and a half weeks of productivity.

The big question for business owners and managers is: What would you do with an extra 144 hours per year?

Lost Operational Costs Savings

Manual route planning by business and non-profit owners and managers is inefficient compared to what a route optimization software tool like EasyRoutes can do. As a result, the business or non-profit fleet continues to drive more miles than it would if they had used a cost-effective delivery route app.

Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that manual route planning causes your fleet to drive 500 miles per month that could have been avoided. Over the course of a year, the loss of those savings really adds up.

Let’s start with the most expensive part of a fleet’s operation: Fuel.

Even when gas is cheap, if you don’t fully optimize your routes, you’re wasting money you shouldn’t be.

Let’s also assume that a gallon of gas costs $1.79. For example, an average 12-foot truck gets 10 miles per gallon. When you drive 500 miles per month that could have been avoided, you’re looking at a monthly cost of $89.50 and a yearly cost of $1,074.00.

Lost Business Revenue

When a delivery route app like EasyRoutes reduces the number of miles driven to complete the same task, managers can fit in more service calls, deliveries, or pick-ups during the week, month, or year. In both good and bad times, that extra revenue can really add up and help a company’s bottom line.

Assume that by fully optimizing your routes, you can squeeze in just one additional service call per week. Assume that the average service call takes two hours and costs $180. Four extra service calls per month equals $720.00 per month and $8,640 in extra revenue per year!

The extra revenue generated from one extra call per week would simply not manifest if you manually optimize routes and drive 500 miles more than you should. That would, in fact, be considered lost revenue.

A Tally of the Hidden Costs

Numbers aren’t deceiving. Here’s an example of how much manual routing costs:

Manual routing costs managers up to 144 hours per year.

Manual Routing Fuel Cost Savings = $1,074.00 per year

Manual Routing Revenue Loss = $8,640 per year (Shoe-horning 1 Extra Service Call Per Week)

When you consider that EasyRoutes can cost basically nothing (we have a free plan for business just starting out, and our paid plans start at $9.99 a month!) and can save you so much time and money, it’s incredible that businesses and non-profits are still manually planning routes for their fleet.

The above-mentioned hypothetical savings amount to around $10,000 per year. The time saved is equivalent to a two-week vacation!

The top three hidden costs of manual routing make a delivery route app like EasyRoutes a no-brainer.

Your Best Delivery Route App: EasyRoutes

See for yourself how the EasyRoutes delivery route app for Shopify can save you from the hidden costs of manual route planning.

We are a Shopify Staff Pick, are very well reviewed, well supported, and we have free trials and plans for businesses of all sizes. Check us out!