Holiday preorder turkey delivery routing (fresh vs frozen days)

How do I route a one-off Thanksgiving turkey delivery day on my own vans?

Treat the holiday wave as its own delivery day — not a stretch of the weekly loop. After orders lock on your cutoff, export the active stops for that day, import them into Porch Routes, and build across the vans you will actually load. Frozen birds ride frozen-capable vehicles only; fresh or chilled birds ride refrigerated-capable vehicles. Drivers get a browser link; customers track under your business name.

That is own-fleet holiday routing for farms and other local delivery businesses — pasture-poultry farms, butchers, and meat or CSA ops who already deliver themselves — not a courier turkey marketplace. Adjacent pages: butcher and frozen meat delivery routing, eggs and poultry multi-stop farm delivery routing, and temperature-aware farm delivery routing.

Why holiday turkey weeks break the weekly route

A mile-only planner assumes next week looks like last week. A Thanksgiving preorder wave does not. The stop list is different, denser, and tied to the week before the holiday. Frozen birds often ship earlier in the week; fresh birds go closer to Thanksgiving. Mixing those packing lists on the wrong day — or putting a frozen bird on a dry truck because the driveway was close — is the failure mode farms and other local delivery businesses already know.

• One-off day (or two). Outside the weekly CSA, home, or standing-order cadence.
• Frozen and fresh often split. Different packing lists, different vans, often different calendar days.
• Porch coolers are porch guidance. Many operators ask customers to leave a cooler; that is not a product feature to enforce.
• Cutoff then route. Orders lock first; then you export active stops and build the day.
• Add-ons ride with their bird. Sides and stock usually share the delivery day of the turkey they belong with.

USDA's food-safety guidance for food shipped to consumers is that perishable orders should arrive frozen, or at or below 40°F on arrival. A turkey that rides an ambient van because the address was close does not get a second chance to meet that line — the vehicle has to be right before the route is built. The same hard rule is spelled out in why frozen can't ride the dry truck.

A Thanksgiving turkey delivery week

1. 1

   Lock orders on your cutoff

   Whatever tool you take preorders in, lock the list before you build routes. Porch Routes does not replace your preorder form, deposits, or holiday calendar — it plans the delivery day after orders are final.

2. 2

   Split frozen-day and fresh-day stop lists

   Export or filter two lists when you ship frozen earlier and fresh closer to the holiday. Keep add-ons on the same day as the bird they belong with. Do not invent an automatic fresh-vs-frozen day splitter — you decide the calendar; the planner builds each day you import.

3. 3

   Import each delivery day

   Import a CSV — the column matcher handles your headers — or send stops from your store or order system over the API. Include windows and mark temperature (frozen vs refrigerated). Spreadsheet path: CSV to multi-vehicle delivery routes. Addresses resolve on OpenStreetMap; you do not need a Google Maps key.

4. 4

   Build vans by temperature

   Pick the day and the vehicles that can carry it. Frozen birds go on frozen-capable vans only; fresh or chilled birds go on refrigerated-capable vans. The optimizer will leave a stop unassigned rather than put it on the wrong truck. Respect stop, weight, or tote capacity when you set them. Lock a must-first stop, drag to reorder, or move between routes. There is no saved route-template feature yet.

5. 5

   Driver links and branded tracking

   Print a run sheet or load list with line items. Text each driver a link — no app install for seasonal help. Drive mode is one stop at a time with maps hand-off and photo proof. Details: farm delivery driver link — no app. Customers track under your business name: farm branded delivery tracking. Watch the day on the dispatch board.

Porch coolers, add-ons, and the weekly route

Many farms and other local delivery businesses that ship Thanksgiving turkeys ask customers to leave a porch cooler for the bird. That is operator porch guidance — not something Porch Routes enforces as a cooler-requirement feature. Add-ons (sides, stock, gravy) usually ride the same delivery day as the bird they belong with; put them on that day's import, not on a random weekly stop.

Keep the normal weekly route or membership stack for the regular share. Use Porch Routes beside it for the holiday wave the same way you would for any dense own-fleet day: CSA delivery routing without replacing membership software. Industry context: farms and ranches and specialty grocers.

USDA's 2022 Census of Agriculture counted 116,617 U.S. farms selling directly to consumers, totaling $3.26 billion in sales. Thanksgiving turkey week is one of the densest own-fleet days many of those farms and other local delivery businesses run — a different stop list from the weekly loop, packed into the days before the holiday, still on their own vans.

A frozen day and a fresh day, worked out

Say the week before Thanksgiving has two lists you already locked. Monday is forty frozen birds plus the stock that belongs with those birds, on the freezer vans you will actually load. Wednesday is twenty-five fresh birds and their sides, on refrigerated vans. Import Monday, build it, and text those drivers. Then import Wednesday as its own day. A fresh address that sits near a Monday freezer stop stays on Wednesday — Porch Routes does not slide it onto the frozen day because the driveway was close, and it does not keep a holiday calendar that splits the lists for you.

If Wednesday's refrigerated van is short, the fresh stops that do not fit stay unassigned with a reason rather than riding the dry truck or the Monday freezer. Seasonal help still opens a texted link in the phone browser. Staff who already have an account can log in instead. Last year's stop order is not a saved template: import that day's orders and build again. The same orders and vehicles plan the same way, and you can lock any stop that must stay put.

Common mistakes on a turkey week

• Putting a frozen bird on a dry truck because the driveway was the next one on the map.
• Parking sides and stock on the weekly route instead of the delivery day of the bird they belong with.
• Treating a porch-cooler note as a rule the planner can enforce.
• Expecting the software to split fresh and frozen onto calendar days by itself.
• Texting a driver link before that day's route is built.

What you can do on Porch Light (free)

Porch Light is free up to 150 orders a month with no credit card. That is enough to run a real holiday turkey day (or a frozen day plus a fresh day) and judge windows, temperature rules, driver links, and branded tracking before you pay. Every feature sits on every plan; plans differ by order volume, included customer texts, and support — never by drivers or vehicles.