Talking to a dispatcher in Nashville changed how I plan my routes

I was on a job last week and the dispatcher told me I should start grouping my calls by street number instead of zip code. She said I was wasting 2 hours a day driving back and forth across town. Has anyone else tried sorting their route by address order instead of area code?

3 comments

3 Comments

nancy_king2917d ago

Yeah so that dispatcher was onto something but she only told you half the story honestly. I've been doing this delivery thing for 15 years and the real trick is you gotta look at the actual street layout not just the numbers. Like in Nashville some streets are laid out in a grid where odd and even numbers are on opposite sides and you can plan your turns better if you know which side your stops are on. I learned this the hard way after I kept going back and forth across a street for 3 hours one day. The zip code thing is a trap too because dispatchers use that for billing but the actual geography doesn't match up sometimes. So yeah grouping by street number works but you also gotta check the map for traffic patterns and one way streets or you'll still waste time. My route time dropped by almost an hour once I started doing both.

angela_patel7517d ago

Oh totally @nancy_king29, I used to think numbers were everything and just trusted the route the system gave me. That bit about checking the actual street layout is what finally clicked for me because I was always zigzagging all over the place. Like one time I had a run on a road that looked straight on paper but it had this weird turn that dumped me into a dead end and I had to backtrack a mile. Now I pull up the map before I even leave and it saves me so much headache. I mean maybe it depends on the city but your point about traffic patterns is huge too cause I used to pick a fast street and then get stuck behind construction for 20 minutes. Honestly your way seems like the real deal and I wish the dispatcher had explained it like you did.

jenny_lee17d ago

Nashville's a weird grid, I had a similar issue on 5th Ave where odd numbers were on the wrong side of a one-way street and I kept circling. @nancy_king29 is right, you gotta check the actual street layout or you'll waste time backtracking.