# A delivery route planner for businesses with their own drivers

> A delivery route planner takes a day's orders and turns them into an ordered list of stops for each driver, sized to what each vehicle can carry and timed to the windows customers were promised. Porch Route does that for businesses that deliver their own orders — farms, butchers, bakeries, florists, grocers, marketplaces — and it is free up to 150 orders a month.

Porch Route · https://porchroutes.com/delivery-route-planner · Last updated September 14, 2026

## What does a delivery route planner do?

It answers three questions for every delivery day: which vehicle takes which orders, in what order the stops are driven, and when each customer should expect the knock. A spreadsheet and a map can answer them for ten stops. Past twenty, across two or three vehicles with different equipment and customers who chose a morning window, the combinations run into the millions and the planner earns its keep.

Under the hood the planner solves a vehicle routing problem: it works out the road distance between every pair of addresses, then searches for the set of routes that visits every stop once, respects each vehicle's limits, arrives inside each time window and drives the fewest miles. A good one also tells you what it could not place — and why — instead of quietly dropping a stop.

- **Input:** the day's orders (address, delivery date, window, what's in the box), your vehicles (what they can carry, how many stops, shift length) and your drivers.
- **Output:** one route per vehicle with stops in order, estimated arrival times, the load on each vehicle, and a list of anything left unassigned with a plain reason.
- **Then:** the plan goes to the drivers' phones, customers get updates as the day unfolds, and each outcome is recorded against the order it came from.

## Who needs a delivery route planner?

Any business that loads its own vans and has more stops than one person can hold in their head, more than one vehicle, or a product that has to stay cold. The businesses that get the most from a planner:

- **Farms and CSAs** delivering meat, dairy, eggs and produce to members spread across a county on one or two days a week — long drives where sequence is everything. See [farms and ranches](https://porchroutes.com/industries/farms-and-ranches).
- **Butchers and meat subscriptions** whose boxes are heavy and frozen, so a van's weight limit and its freezer both matter. See [butchers and meat delivery](https://porchroutes.com/industries/butchers-and-meat).
- **Bakeries and meal prep kitchens** with early windows customers plan their morning around. See [bakeries and meal prep](https://porchroutes.com/industries/bakeries-and-meal-prep).
- **Florists** delivering to someone other than the buyer, on a day that can't slip. See [florists](https://porchroutes.com/industries/florists).
- **Specialty grocers and co-ops** with baskets that mix frozen, refrigerated and dry in one order. See [specialty grocers](https://porchroutes.com/industries/specialty-grocers).
- **Marketplaces and platforms** that take the order and need delivery handled and reported back by API. See [marketplaces and platforms](https://porchroutes.com/industries/marketplaces-and-platforms).

## What should you look for in a delivery route planner?

Most planners optimise distance well; the differences are in the constraints they respect, what drivers and customers see, and whether outcomes get back to the system that took the order. Use this table as the checklist for a demo.

**What to look for in a delivery route planner, and the question that reveals it**

| Capability | Why it matters | Ask the vendor |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Time windows | Customers who chose 9–12 expect 9–12. Late arrivals are the top reason customers leave a delivery service. | Can a stop have a window, and does the plan honour it or just report the miss? |
| Vehicle capacity | A van has a weight limit and a realistic stop count for one shift. | Can I set weight, a stop limit and a shift length per vehicle? |
| Temperature | Frozen and refrigerated orders can only ride on vehicles that keep them cold. | Is temperature a hard rule in the optimiser, or a tag the driver has to notice? |
| Proof of delivery | A photo or signature settles disputes and shows the customer where the box is. | Can I require a photo or signature before a stop can be finished? |
| Customer notifications | “Where's my order?” calls stop when customers get a text and a tracking page. | Which updates go out, under whose name, and can a mistake be undone before the customer is told? |
| Drivers without an app | Weekend and seasonal drivers won't install another app or make another account. | Can a driver run the route from a link, and what happens when the phone loses signal? |
| Integrations | Orders should arrive from your store, and outcomes should go back to it. | Is there an API keyed by my own order number, and are webhooks signed and retried? |
| An honest baseline | “Saved 32%” means nothing without knowing what it's compared with. | What is the savings figure measured against? |
| Price unit | Per-driver pricing punishes a farm with four part-time drivers; per-order pricing fits it. | Do I pay per order, per driver or per stop, and are texts included? |

## How does Porch Route handle each?

### Time windows and locked stops

Every order can carry a delivery window, and the optimiser sequences stops to arrive inside it. When you know better than the machine — the customer who must be first, the stop that has to be last — lock the stop in place and re-optimise around it; a locked stop never moves. You can also drag to reorder, or move a stop to another route.

### Vehicles with real limits

Each vehicle has a weight capacity, a maximum number of stops, a shift, and a cost per mile so savings show up in dollars. Unknown weights are flagged rather than counted as zero, so a van is never overloaded by an order nobody weighed.

### Temperature as a hard rule

Each vehicle declares what it can carry — frozen, refrigerated, dry — and the optimiser will not put a frozen box on a dry van to save a mile. A stop that no vehicle can carry waits unassigned with the reason in plain words, like “No vehicle can carry frozen items,” so the fix is obvious. See [keeping frozen and refrigerated orders safe](https://porchroutes.com/learn/cold-chain-for-small-delivery-fleets).

### Proof of delivery

Drivers take a photo or collect a signature at the door, and you decide whether either is required before a stop can be finished. Proof is stored privately, shown on the customer's tracking page and sent to your system with the outcome. See [proof of delivery](https://porchroutes.com/learn/proof-of-delivery).

### Customer texts, emails and a tracking page

Customers can get five updates — scheduled, on the way, almost there, delivered and couldn't deliver — by text or email, under your business's name, each with a link to a live tracking page showing the truck on its way, a timeline and the proof photo once it lands. The delivered notice waits a few minutes so a driver's mis-tap can be undone before anyone is told.

### Drivers run the route from a link

Dispatching a route texts or emails the driver a link that opens drive mode in the phone's browser — no app, no account. Staff drivers can log in instead. Drive mode shows one stop at a time, hands off to Google Maps or Apple Maps, and queues anything done without signal until the phone reconnects. See [driver apps vs texted route links](https://porchroutes.com/learn/delivery-driver-apps-vs-texted-route-links).

### Orders in by API, outcomes out by webhook

Send deliveries from your store with one call keyed by your own order number; retrying with the same idempotency key never creates the same delivery twice. Every outcome comes back over a signed webhook carrying that same number, with retries and a reconciliation sweep so nothing is lost quietly. No store? Import a CSV or add orders by hand. Details in the [API documentation](https://porchroutes.com/docs/api).

### Savings you can check

Every plan is compared with driving the same stops, on the same vehicles, in the order the orders arrived — an honest baseline. Miles, drive time and fuel saved are shown per route and for the day.

## How is this different from a multi-stop route planner or Google Maps?

Google Maps and the free multi-stop planners solve one route for one vehicle, with no time windows, no capacity, no temperature and no record of what happened at the door. They are fine for ten stops in one car. A delivery route planner plans across the whole fleet at once and then runs the day: dispatch, drivers, customer updates, proof and the report back to your store. The map is where it starts, not where it ends.

The other difference is repeatability: Porch Route plans the same orders and vehicles the same way every time, with no randomness in the optimiser, so nobody is surprised at the morning briefing.

## What does a delivery route planner cost?

Pricing is by orders, not drivers or vehicles; every feature is on every plan. Porch Light is free up to 150 orders a month, one vehicle. Starter is $39 a month for 500 orders and 750 texts; Porch is $79 for 1,000 orders and 1,500 texts; Route is $189 for 5,000 orders, 7,500 texts and priority support; Fleet is custom. Paid plans have unlimited vehicles and drivers, extra texts cost $0.015 each, annual billing is two months free, and the 14-day trial of Porch needs no card.

| Plan | Price | Orders | Vehicles and drivers | Customer texts | Support |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Porch Light | Free | Up to 150 orders a month | 1 vehicle | Email and tracking-link updates | Email support |
| Starter | $39 a month, or $390 a year | Up to 500 orders a month | Unlimited vehicles and drivers | 750 customer texts a month | Email support |
| Porch | $79 a month, or $790 a year | Up to 1,000 orders a month | Unlimited vehicles and drivers | 1,500 customer texts a month | Email support |
| Route | $189 a month, or $1890 a year | Up to 5,000 orders a month | Unlimited vehicles and drivers | 7,500 customer texts a month | Priority support |
| Fleet | Custom | More than 5,000 orders a month | Unlimited vehicles and drivers | Texts set for your volume | A dedicated contact |

Every feature is on every plan. Texts past an allowance are $0.015 a text or $10 per 500; email and tracking links are always free. Prices are early-access pricing, in US dollars, as of September 14, 2026.

For what other products charge — per order, per driver or per stop, and how texts are billed — see [how much delivery route software costs in 2026](https://porchroutes.com/learn/how-much-does-delivery-route-software-cost).

## How do you plan your first delivery day?

1. **Add your vehicles** Name each van, tick what it can carry (frozen, refrigerated, dry), set its weight capacity, stop limit and shift, and add your drivers.
2. **Set up zones if you deliver on set days** Draw an area or set a radius, and give it its delivery days and window. Orders added by hand or from a CSV are matched to a zone; orders from your store's API arrive already decided.
3. **Bring in a day of orders** Send them over the API with your order numbers, import a spreadsheet, or type them in. Addresses are found on OpenStreetMap; anything that can't be placed is flagged for a look rather than dropped.
4. **Build the routes** Pick the day and the vehicles. Review the plan on the map and the list, lock or reorder anything you know better, and read what the plan saves against driving the orders as they came in.
5. **Dispatch** Each driver gets a link to their route by text or email. Customers get their scheduled notice. Print a manifest if the loaders want paper.
6. **Watch the day and close it out** The dispatch board shows every route on a timeline and a map. As stops are delivered, customers hear, your store hears, and the route summary tells you how the day compared with the plan.

## Questions

### Is there a free delivery route planner?

Yes. Porch Light is free for good: up to 150 orders a month on one vehicle, with the full optimiser, drive mode, proof of delivery, tracking pages and the orders API. Texts come with the paid plans.

### Does the planner need a Google Maps key?

No. Addresses, road distances and maps run on OpenStreetMap by default, with nothing to set up and no map bill. Google Maps is supported if you prefer it.

### Can it plan for more than one vehicle at once?

Yes. Porch Route plans the whole fleet in one pass, splitting stops by what each vehicle can carry, its capacity and its shift, and fitting each stop's window. The same inputs always produce the same routes.

### Do drivers have to install an app?

No. Dispatching a route texts or emails the driver a link that opens drive mode in the phone's browser. The link works for one route, stops working two days after the route date, and can be turned off any time. Staff drivers can log in instead.

### Does it connect to Shopify, WooCommerce or my own system?

Any system that can send an HTTP request can send Porch Route its deliveries today, keyed by your order reference, and receive signed webhooks back; a CSV export works too. Direct Shopify and WooCommerce connectors are coming.

---

Source: https://porchroutes.com/delivery-route-planner