Commercial vehicles encounter various road restrictions, including size limitations, weight restrictions, and street access restrictions. This feature takes all these factors into account to provide you with an efficient route optimization solution for your large and hazardous material vehicles. In this article, we will explain more about what this is and how to set it up.
Who can use this feature | |
Available on Custom Truck plans | |
Users that have administrator privileges | |
North America, United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia |
What is commercial truck routing?
Commercial truck routing is a type of vehicle routing profile. When a vehicle has a commercial routing profile, the routing algorithm will take into account specific road restrictions (including bridges and tunnels) applicable to commercial vehicles with the following dimensions:
- Height of 12.5ft (3.8m)
- Width of 8.2ft (2.5m)
- Length of 33ft (10m)
- Weight of 33,000lbs (15 metric tonnes)
Hazardous material load content can also be taken into account as well. By enabling the "Hazardous Material" option, any road restrictions for transporting hazardous materials will be additionally considered in addition to the above-mentioned commercial vehicle dimension restrictions.
Setting up commercial truck routing
For whole fleet
To set up a commercial routing for your entire fleet, you just need to adjust the default routing profile:
- Go to Administration→Settings
- Click “Route & Planning” from the left menu
- Select “Routing Profiles”
- Choose the “Commercial Truck” option for the vehicle type
- Choose other vehicle routing options if necessary
- Click “Save”
Now this will be automatically applied to all your vehicles.
For mixed fleets
To use commercial truck routing for selected drivers and vehicles, you'll need to create routing profiles:
- Go to Administration→Settings
- Click “Route & Planning” from the left menu
- Select “Routing Profiles”
- Click “Add profile” to create a new profile
- Give the profile a name
- Choose the "Commercial Truck" option for the vehicle type
- Choose other vehicle routing options if necessary
- Click "Save"
Next, you will need to make sure this routing profile is assigned to a vehicle:
- Go to Administration→Vehicles
- Either click "Add vehicle" or choose the vehicle(s) you want to edit and click "Edit vehicles"
- In the "Routing profile" section, choose the routing profile you created
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Click "Save"
Finally, you will need to check to make sure your vehicles are assigned to a driver:
- Go to Administration→Drivers
- Choose the driver(s) you want to edit
- Click "Edit drivers"
- In the "Default vehicle" section, choose vehicle with the commercial truck profile prepared in the earlier step
- Click "Save"
Now your vehicles and drivers are ready and the next time you plan, they will be routed accordingly to avoid all prohibited roads.
Routing results
After you have finished enabling the feature for your drivers, it is time to try out your new commercial routing profile.
- Go to the "Plan and Optimize" tab
- Choose a date with orders that you want to optimize
- Click “Plan routes”
Take a moment to review and analyze the results. OptimoRoute provides detailed route summaries, showing the order of stops, estimated arrival times, and total distance traveled. You should notice that the driver with the commercial vehicle has now avoided any:
- Roads with height or weight restrictions
- Incompatible tunnels and bridges with height and weight restrictions*
- If hazardous material routing is enabled, it will also avoid any incompatible roads for hazmat transport
*It is possible that bridges with weight constraints will be chosen for a route if no other routes are available. |
All planning and other functions are compatible with commercial routing profiles and shouldn't create any conflicts.
It should also be noted that the optimization algorithm will strongly discourage the use of restricted roads, prioritizing safer and more appropriate routes, however the system will still allow order points to be placed on restricted roads or areas to facilitate deliveries and services in such locations if needed.
So for example, if you manually add a stop to a driver's route that has an incompatible road, the system will allow you to do this.
Commercial vehicle routing feature is specifically designed for routes generated by OptimoRoute so it will not have any impact on the mobile navigation application used by drivers, as this application is a third-party tool. Consequently, the drivers may still receive navigation suggestions that involve limited or restricted roads from navigation apps.
Tip: Learn more by watching our Commercial Routing webinar. |
What's next for commercial routing?
We are in the process of developing a navigation specifically for commercial vehicles. Please reach out to support if you are interested in being part of the first users to test this new feature.