Description

Trash Flow offers route optimization as a monthly paid service. It's designed to take your route(s) and move the stop order around to give a shorter driving distance.

Before You Begin

You need to have Trash Flow's routing module with routes already present (though the stops do not have to be in any particular order). You must also subscribe to our Address Verification System (AVS) (AVS); this is how the program knows the location of every customer along the route. Finally, the stops along the route have to be accurately mapped in order for the results to be useful.

How does right-hand optimization work?

You don't need to know this information to optimize routes but it provides a more technical explanation for those who are curious. All route opt software attempts to find the shortest driven route to hit every stop. Trying to arrive at said stop with it on the right hand side of the truck (where possible, excluding one way streets) adds a good bit of complexity but it's a crucial requirement for automated side loader truck routes. Part of how Trash Flow achieves this is by adding a heavy "cost" for U-turns. This influences the preferred pickup order, typically by choosing one with no u turns between stops.

To build in these so called "U Turn costs" we make use of the "turn cost" feature that adds weight to the calculated distance when turning is involved. Turning right would cost less than turning left in most places, turning left across multiple lanes would cost more, and we tune the u-turn portion of the cost to be absurdly high to avoid them all together if at all possible. Turn costs do not exist in any way in non-right hand routes.

Note that the side of the road is determined by the "snap point to road" feature of Open Street Maps. This is a common concept in mapping software, taking the latitude and longitude of a building and interpreting the curbside location.

Context

Routes often become less efficient over time as new customers sign up and old customers leave. Computers can now compare many distance calculations to come up with the shortest possible driving distance. Briefly, this involves treating every route stop as a distinct point on a map. Trash Flow calculates the distance from each point to every other point—then turns around and calculates the distance in the other direction to account for any one-way streets. It finishes by sending back the a route with the shortest possible distance between all the stops.

Please note that road distance is the only factor Trash Flow considers: it cannot (for instance) allow for certain stops that must be picked up earlier or later in the day, avoid roads that your trucks can't drive, etc. This service can optimize up to 2,000 stops at once. You'll be able to choose whether you want the end result to be a single route or up to four optimized routes in total.

Steps to follow

1. Open a route that you want to optimize.
2. Right-click within the window and click Optimize Route.
3. A new Route Opt Batch window should appear with the route you selected on the right. You can add one or more additional routes from the left panel. Click OK when done making your selection(s). (If this window does not appear you will instead see a report of addresses along the route you selected that have not been mapped.)
4. Choose the truck's Start Location (often your office or yard) and End Location (usually the office or a landfill).
5. Enter how many routes you want Trash Flow to create (between one and four) and an estimate of how many seconds the truck will be at each stop.
6. If desired check the box for Right hand routing. This makes the new route do only right turns whenever possible and we recommend using this option if you use an automated side load truck.
7. Choose a Route name prefix. Instead of overwriting your old routes Trash Flow creates a new optimized route for you to review.
8. Keep Route Notes only affects any notes that you added between stops within the route, not any route notes on customer accounts. Choose whether to exclude them from the route, keep them with the stop above the note, or keep them with the stop below the note.
9. Click OK to start optimizing the route. Trash Flow's servers handle the work at this point; you can continue to work as normal.

When you're done

The Routing button in Trash Flow will let you know that at least one batch is Pending. Once this switches to Awaiting Review the newly optimized route will be available in Trash Flow. The new route is like any other route—stops can be moved, added, or deleted. It will initially be named with the prefix chosen in step 6 along with the date. If more than one route is optimized that day there will be an additional number at the end counting up (1, 2, 3, 4, etc.).

Further resources

• Routing
• Address Verification System (AVS)