6 Tips to Help You Become a Faster Delivery Driver

When deliveries take longer than anticipated, delivery drivers and courier companies become frustrated. When traffic is bad and drivers are behind schedule, they can try to make up for lost time by driving faster, putting their safety at risk and causing even more delays.

Drivers who are rushing to make up for lost time can drive more aggressively and make reckless pickup and drop-off mistakes. As they strive to cut down on the time they spend at each station, they can be more abrupt with customers. Customers are still annoyed by the delivery error, and it all adds up to a negative impression of both the driver and the delivery business.

How can delivery drivers be quicker without violating the law, jeopardizing their safety, or sacrificing customer service?

We’ll give you six tips and techniques in this post to give delivery drivers an advantage so they can deliver faster without risking their safety by rushing down their path.

We’ll also look at how distribution companies can use EasyRoutes to enhance processes and find efficiencies, helping them to reliably deliver on time and have excellent customer service:

1. Get Organized
2. Find the Shortest Delivery Route
3. Avoid Traffic
4. Drive Carefully
5. Reduce Distractions
6. Take Your Time to Think
7. Conclusion: How EasyRoutes Helps Delivery Drivers Be Faster

#1 Get Organized

Before you head off on a delivery path, you will start being a quicker delivery driver. All delivery driver jobs require meticulous preparation, which should be a part of your daily routine if you want to improve your speed.

That may seem self-evident at first, but “being unorganized” was cited by some of the drivers and distribution companies we spoke with as one reason that delayed delivery times.

Planning ahead of time entails:

Knowing how many packages need to be shipped on each route; understanding the order in which those packages will be delivered; and loading your car with packages in delivery route order.

EasyRoutes helps you to construct efficient distribution routes and a list of stops in order of arrival for each route. This provides drivers with the information they need to load delivery orders as efficiently as possible before they begin driving.

Drivers can easily access the correct package for each stop by planning themselves ahead of time, based on the optimized list of stops EasyRoutes has estimated, rather than stumbling around when they arrive. This decreases the amount of time spent at each address and the total delivery time.

Another significant factor in speeding up deliveries is ensuring that drivers have correct driving directions and delivery addresses. When driving directions lead delivery vehicles in the wrong direction or deliveries are delivered to the wrong address, it is inconvenient and time-consuming for drivers, delivery companies, and customers.

Delivery driver team managers can ensure that each driver receives correct driving directions based on the delivery list by using EasyRoutes. EasyRoutes’ direct integration with Shopify and your orders also prevents errors that can occur when manually entering addresses into a routing tool.

#2 Find the Shortest Delivery Route

Speeding up deliveries without hitting the speed limit or jeopardizing driver protection requires efficient routing. Manually linking all of your delivery addresses by using online tools like Google Maps to find the shortest route is time-consuming and inefficient because:

• Manually estimating routes requires a lot of guesswork about what order to deliver packages and which path is the fastest;
• online routing tools aren’t intended for distribution companies or independent contractors who have a lot of drop offs;
• and Google Maps has a ten-stop cap per route, which means you’ll have to measure multiple routes separately.

EasyRoutes optimizes distribution routes in just a few taps, removing all the guesswork from the process. Here’s how it works:

• Choose the orders you want to route (because EasyRoutes is compatible with Shopify and your orders, there’s no need to use spreadsheets to import your addresses). However, if you need to, you can always add custom addresses!) ;
• EasyRoutes will create your optimized delivery routes in a matter of seconds.
• Share the route with your drivers which they can open on their mobile phones.

EasyRoutes not only calculates the most effective route, but it also provides a precise ETA for each stop — and for the entire delivery route. This allows dispatchers and drivers to add additional stops to each delivery route if desired.

#3 Avoid Traffic

The most significant factor delaying deliveries is traffic. Avoiding traffic can seem to be a difficult task, but most good route optimization software recalculates delivery routes in real time to avoid traffic delays.

EasyRoutes integrates with your preferred navigation app: Google Maps, Waze, or Apple Maps, allowing you to take advantage of traffic conditions along the road. These apps reroute delivery drivers to avoid traffic congestion and keep delivery delays to a minimum if there is bad traffic ahead.

When drivers use EasyRoutes, they don’t have to think about finding their own shortcuts through congested areas — or disclosing delays to HQ or customers.

A calm driver with enough mental space to make sound choices is also a safer driver and provides better customer service.

#4 Drive Carefully

Your deliveries should not be slowed because you are driving carefully. Of course, all delivery teams prioritize driver protection, and preventing injuries ensures both driver well-being and timely deliveries.

There’s no reason for drivers to hurry because they know exactly when their day will end and can be assured that their route is as fast as possible for the amount of packages in their car.

By measuring the cumulative amount of time any route would take, EasyRoutes provides this clarification to drivers at all times. There’s no need for them to rush.

#5 Reduce Distractions

Reduced distractions when driving increases driver safety and can also shorten delivery times. A driver who uses their mobile phone while driving (even hands-free) risks a traffic accident, and pulling over to take the call slows down the delivery process.

It goes without saying that personal calls on the road should be kept to a bare minimum. At the same time, many of our users point out that one major diversion prior to using EasyRoutes was answering calls from dispatchers seeking an ETA for a particular delivery or determining the next delivery address.

Customers can receive email updates from EasyRoutes. This eliminates the need for frequent (or lengthy) phone calls to check on progress or to request an approximate arrival time at a specific drop-off location.

EasyRoutes’ precise driving directions eliminate the need for drivers to read written instructions or lists, which can be distracting. Drivers can keep their eyes on the road by sending these driving directions to the EasyRoutes mobile-friendly delivery view and following them on a maps app like Waze, Google Maps, or Apple Maps.

#6 Take Your Time to Think

According to the distribution managers and dispatchers we talked with, keeping a level head and pausing to deliberate before jumping into decisions when out on a delivery route is an undervalued ability in the delivery world. “Ironically, not slowing down to think continues to trigger mistakes and poor judgment calls,” as one user put it.

You can relieve some of the burden on delivery drivers by using routing and delivery management tools like EasyRoutes, allowing them to focus on delivering safely and providing excellent customer service.

Conclusion: How EasyRoutes Helps Delivery Drivers Be Faster

“Because EasyRoutes runs so smoothly with our back end, we have acquired our own driver fleet which was never originally part of our business plan.”Rish Dhuck, Direction of Operations for Bloomen.ca

EasyRoutes allows delivery companies to streamline their processes by giving them access to:

Drive times that are accurate and allow for efficient planning: Based on the orders you pick, EasyRoute’s routing program determines how long a route will take. If space allows, you can add more items to your delivery route and load your vehicle depending on the order in which you arrive at each delivery stop. This reduces the amount of time you spend at each stop.

Route optimization and re-optimization, making your delivery route faster and more efficient to deliver: EasyRoutes not only offers the most effective delivery routing, but it also provides precise driving directions that are simple to follow on a mobile maps app, adjusting for traffic conditions as you go and reducing delays to a minimum.

Reduced distractions by driver monitoring and customer notifications: Without having to contact their drivers, driver team managers may monitor their progress along each delivery path. When making deliveries or labeling items as shipped or missing, customers may receive updates.

Automated processes allow drivers to concentrate on their work: EasyRoutes relieves pressure on delivery drivers by assuming responsibility for calculating efficient paths, driving directions, avoiding traffic, customer alerts, driver monitoring, and ETAs. This allows them to concentrate on what they do best: driving and transporting deliveries as efficiently as possible.

Learn more about EasyRoutes on the Roundtrip website.

Get EasyRoutes on the Shopify App Store