Hello!
May I start out by saying that I'm consistently impressed by the great service I receive from all my posties. Come sun, rain, or snow they always knock extra loud and deliver my post with a smile.
Being the sad individual I am, when I'm expecting a parcel I'm particularly eager to receive I will often sit in and wait, constantly refreshing the Parcelforce live tracking map to watch the delivery van progress towards me. I've noticed that the routes they take often seem to go back and forth across the city multiple times in a seemingly very unusual way. My question is, is this an incredibly clever route calculated by an extremely complicated method that no one man could ever hope to understand, or is it simply the result of the system presenting the deliveries to the driver in some set way?
Not a complaint, just a genuine curiosity!
Thanks
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Delivery Routes
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Snaggletooth
- EX POST OFFICE
- Posts: 2226
- Joined: 13 Sep 2011, 20:17
- Gender: Male
Delivery Routes
I have wondered the same when watching the tracking for private delivery companies. If you plotted the route the driver took over the course of the day it would look like a tangled ball of string.
The problem is, the optimum route isn’t just the nicest looking line on the map. Parcelforce sells services that are guaranteed by 9am, 10am, noon and close of business, and that’s just the services available to the general public. Some companies sell services that have a guaranteed time slot (earliest and latest time). So the driver has to be aware of what the deadline is on all their parcels, restricting their ability to follow a neat line. Most PFW drivers will need to visit one or more Post Offices to drop off undeliverable parcels, this needs to happen towards the end of the duty but before the PO closes. Many drivers will also need to make pickups from POs, businesses and private properties, and there are likely to be set timeframes for these to happen. So it isn’t simple.
Alternatively, yes, there have been some disastrous attempts over the years to automate routes, duties etc. Like the Romec engineer who was allegedly sent from London to Belfast to change a lightbulb, because the software thought that was a good use of resources.
I don’t know enough about PFW to say which of those is correct.
The problem is, the optimum route isn’t just the nicest looking line on the map. Parcelforce sells services that are guaranteed by 9am, 10am, noon and close of business, and that’s just the services available to the general public. Some companies sell services that have a guaranteed time slot (earliest and latest time). So the driver has to be aware of what the deadline is on all their parcels, restricting their ability to follow a neat line. Most PFW drivers will need to visit one or more Post Offices to drop off undeliverable parcels, this needs to happen towards the end of the duty but before the PO closes. Many drivers will also need to make pickups from POs, businesses and private properties, and there are likely to be set timeframes for these to happen. So it isn’t simple.
Alternatively, yes, there have been some disastrous attempts over the years to automate routes, duties etc. Like the Romec engineer who was allegedly sent from London to Belfast to change a lightbulb, because the software thought that was a good use of resources.
I don’t know enough about PFW to say which of those is correct.
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JustinT
- Posts: 2
- Joined: 08 Jul 2020, 09:12
- Gender: Female
Delivery Routes
Something I had always wondered as well. Thank you for the info Snaggletooth that at least clears up a lot of the mystery, I hadn't considered the need to cater for different timed services.
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barrythesprout
- Posts: 2
- Joined: 07 Jul 2020, 09:19
- Gender: Male
Delivery Routes
Thank you Snaggletooth. Yes I was completely forgetting about guaranteed delivery slots and collections the driver will need to make, that would certainly explain it! Thank you for that.