PROJECT 18 / VENTURES & INDEPENDENT WORK
A better plan for every delivery
A route planner for small delivery businesses that turns a list of addresses into optimised routes and hands each driver a Google Maps-ready plan.
- Role
- Designer and builder
- Where
- Self-directed
- When
- Ongoing
CONTEXT
Route planning by hand
A florist, a courier, a food delivery driver: they start the day with a list of addresses and no route. The job of ordering those stops, grouping the ones that are near each other, and getting the result into the driver's hands is done on paper, in a spreadsheet, or in a navigation app one stop at a time.
Delivery Route Optimizer collapses that into a single workflow: bring a list, set up the run, send each driver a route. It is route optimization for the businesses that have never had a dispatch system, built so they can try it without a credit card and without creating an account.
THE WORKFLOW
Three steps from order list to out the door.
- Bring the delivery list: addresses, names, phone numbers
- Set up today's run: the depot, the fleet, the area
- Send each driver a route, ready for Google Maps
KEY DECISIONS
The calls that shaped it.
GOOGLE MAPS AS THE HANDOFF
Tension
The instinct is to build a navigation experience inside the product, but drivers already navigate with Google Maps and will not abandon it.
Decision
Make the output a Google Maps link, a contact list, or an emailed run, so the product hands off to the tool drivers already trust.
Tradeoff
It gives up ownership of the in-route experience. That is the honest trade: a planner that fits existing habits beats one that demands a new one.
TRY IT WITHOUT AN ACCOUNT
Tension
Route optimization is a trust problem as much as a technical one, and a signup wall puts friction between a busy owner and the first route.
Decision
Let anyone plan a route free, with no credit card and no account, before asking them to commit to a paid tier.
Tradeoff
Anonymous free usage is harder to convert and harder to support. It is also the only way a skeptical small business tries the thing at all.
OUTCOME
Delivery Route Optimizer is live at deliveryrouteoptimizer.com, with a free tier and paid tiers for growing fleets. The design work was in resisting the urge to build a full navigation app and instead making the handoff the feature.