Temperature-aware route planning for farm and local-food delivery

The failure mode every farm knows

A generic multi-stop planner optimises for miles and windows. That works until a sixty-pound frozen order is closer to the produce van than to the reefer. The optimiser saves a mile. The box thaws. The member is angry. The driver invents a workaround that never makes it into next week's plan.

Miles still matter. Capability matters more. If a vehicle cannot keep a stop cold, that stop should not ride on it — even when the map says it is convenient.

Temperature as a hard vehicle rule

In Porch Routes every vehicle declares what it can carry: frozen, refrigerated, dry, or a mix. The optimiser treats that as a hard rule. It will not place a frozen stop on a dry truck to save distance. If no capable vehicle is available that day, the stop stays unassigned with the reason written out before anything is loaded.

• Per-vehicle capability. Mark each van honestly for frozen, refrigerated, and dry.
• Hard constraint in the build. Temperature is not a tag you hope a dispatcher notices.
• Unassigned with a reason. A stop that cannot ride safely waits instead of riding wrong.
• Orders without a class. An order sent without a temperature rides as its coldest item.
• Unknown weights flagged. Missing weights are never counted as zero.

Built for people who already deliver themselves

This page is for farms, ranches, CSAs, butchers, bakeries, and specialty grocers who pack orders and load their own vans. It is not courier-marketplace dispatch. One day, several vehicles, one plan that respects what each truck can carry.

From spreadsheet morning to drivers on the road

1. 1

   Orders come in

   Send them over the API with your own order number, import a CSV, or add them by hand. Addresses resolve on OpenStreetMap — no map key to buy.

2. 2

   Build the routes

   Pick the day and the vehicles. Porch Routes splits stops by what each vehicle can carry, fits windows and capacity, and shows what the plan saves versus driving stops in the order they arrived.

3. 3

   Dispatch without an app install

   Each driver gets a link to their route. Drive mode runs in the phone browser: one stop at a time, hand-off to maps, photo or signature proof, and an undo window before the customer is told.

4. 4

   Customers and your order system hear back

   Texts and a live tracking page go out under your business name. When the undo window closes, outcomes go to your order system over a signed webhook.

How this differs from tools you already saw

• Vs all-in-one CSA suites. Keep membership and billing if they work. Porch Routes is the routing layer that respects temperature. See CSA delivery routing without replacing membership software.
• Vs general multi-stop apps (Spoke / Circuit, OptimoRoute, Route4Me). Strong for dry SMB routes; hard frozen / refrigerated / dry vehicle rules are not usually the lead story. See the farm delivery comparison.
• Vs Routific. A strong food-adjacent multi-stop peer. Porch Routes' wedge is hard vehicle temperature capability, farm-first signup to first route, and free Porch Light with no card — not a claim that peers cannot meter by orders.

What “hard rule” means in practice

A soft preference—“try to keep frozen together”—still lets an optimizer trade a few degrees for a shorter drive. A hard rule refuses that trade. Frozen capacity is a budget; once the freezer bay is full, another frozen stop cannot sneak onto that van even if the map looks empty. Refrigerated and dry have their own budgets. The plan either fits or it tells you which orders need another vehicle, another wave, or a next-day slot.

That honesty matters more than a prettier ETA. Farms already know which coolers fail in July traffic. The software’s job is to stop the morning plan from pretending otherwise. When temperature classes ride on the order and the vehicle, the day board can show a van that is over on frozen before anyone loads a single tote—and that is the moment to split the route, not after the ice cream softens on stop fourteen.

Driver links fit the same realism. Seasonal help should open a phone link, tap through stops in order, and mark delivered without creating accounts or installing apps. Temperature-aware planning only helps if the person at the dock can follow the plan you just built. Pair hard vehicle rules with a link that expires when the route is done, and you keep food safety and staffing flexibility on the same morning.

Customer updates close the loop. On-the-way and delivered texts (on paid plans, once texting is ready) tell someone their frozen box is coming without you babysitting a group chat. Until texts are on, email and the tracking link still carry the same story. The point is not more notifications, it is fewer “where is my order?” calls while you keep the cold chain honest.

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 weekly farm or CSA day and judge whether temperature-hard routing fits before you pay. Every feature sits on every plan; plans differ by order volume, included customer texts, and support.

Treat the free tier as a rehearsal, not a brochure. Add the vans you actually own, mark which ones keep frozen, import tomorrow’s stops, and build routes once. If a frozen order refuses a dry truck with a clear reason, you have seen the product do the job that notes and tags never will. That is the bar for switching stacks on a real membership morning—not a feature checklist alone. Keep the spreadsheet for one more week if you must; the dry-run will still tell you.