Analysis: Trucking and Fleet Management Apps

Circuit Route Planner - 

• Overview: The Circuit Route Planner App makes deliveries easier. They make it quick and easy to optimize your multiple drivers across the deliveries that you need to make on time today. Their proof of delivery capabilities reduce risk for senders of packages, and their package tracking capabilities make life easier for package recipients. They work with hundreds of global couriers like FedEx, UPS, and DPD. They help drivers make 300 million deliveries every year. 

• Reference Customers: OK! Kombucha (case study here), M20 Refills (case study here), YYC Local Wipes (case study here),  Three Chimney Farm (case study here), Bicycle Courier Company (case study here), Dutch courier company (case study here)

• Potential Issues: Like everything in the trucking and fleet management section, this is built for delivery drivers making deliveries, not salespeople. There are complaints about the multiple drivers features where you can balance work across multiple drivers. There are also reports that this works a lot better on Android than iOS, which makes sense as they are based in Europe and have many more reviews in the Play Store than in the Apple App store. So if your drivers use Apple products, look closely with a trial to make sure this will work for you. They can only upload spreadsheets in their Android version not their iOS version. So your drivers will have to input addresses manually on a daily basis if they have iOS. 

• Demo: Android demo here. No demo for iOS. Youtube page with all videos here

• Published price: here

Route4me -

• Overview: The Route4me App makes deliveries easier by quickly helping people that need routes built to build them. They support complex routing functionality for your fleet like time windows for deliveries, curbside drop offs, commercial vehicle routing, max weight, max pieces, and max cube per route, and a bunch of other features that are important if you are balancing deliveries across your truck fleet. 

They don’t just focus on  delivery drivers alone, and instead have a long list of industries that they build routes for listed on their homepage. They appear to do a lot with home services, like pool services, which would put them in direct competition with apps in the B2C focused space, but we did not see many of the functionality that those companies have to help people that sell to houses, so it's unclear if B2C sales is really a focus for them. They seem focused on building the underlying routing technology API that can be applied in other more specialized applications. 

Route4me has an API that other companies use to build route software, and they appear to have a focus on the development of the actual ability to route, while a lot of other companies appear to use APIs like this one or the one from Google or Here.com. So they can enable other apps like food delivery apps, other fleet management apps, government apps, and utility apps to include routing. Other App companies don’t publicly list who their routing provider is, but it seems to us that some of the other companies on this list may be using Route4me’s route API in their app. 

Route4me also makes it quick and easy to optimize your multiple drivers in your fleet across the deliveries that you need to make on time today. Their proof of delivery capabilities reduce risk for senders of packages, and their package tracking capabilities make life easier for package recipients. 

Route4me works on the iOS, Android, Tablets, and in the Browser. 

• Reference Customers: None listed

• Potential Issues: It is unclear how the routing algorithm they have built compares to the other popular routing algorithms that were built by Google and Here.com, which are both much larger companies. They are both a routing algorithm provider and have an app, but the App is generalized to so many industries it's unclear if they are optimized for all those different industries. For example, if your App is for routing for trucking, delivery, people selling to houses, people selling to businesses, people doing field service work, people doing things like lawn care, sales people, field marketers, dispatch applications etc. there may be a problem in that these are very different use cases. Basically by not focusing but building your App to work for everyone, it wouldn’t be optimized for anyone. 

That being said, we believe from our research that this App is mostly used for trucking and delivery firms and they have a case of Marketing Creep, saying they do everything for everyone. But with 54 employees, they are the largest firm in the Trucking and Fleet Management App space, so we believe that they have a lot of trucking companies using their App for routing and fleet management. Compare that to one of their main competitors, Road Warrior, with 3 employees listed on Linkedin, or Circuit Route Planner at 24 employees. So don’t just judge this App negatively based on their scattered marketing messaging, if you have a fleet of trucks that need to have their routes optimized, this is definitely an App to put on the list to test out.

• Demo: WebApp demo here. Youtube page with all videos here

• Published price: here. But if you have more than 10 users, you need to get a custom price quote. 

RoadWarrior -

• Overview: Whether you're a local business that needs to make deliveries or a contractor for a global logistics company, or a dispatcher trying to help get your fleet where it needs to go, RoadWarrior can help you build routes and manage your trucking fleet. Roadwarrior is integrated with FedEx manifests, which saves independent FedEx delivery drivers time because they don’t have to manually enter their stops. For teams, you can plan, optimize, assign, and manage routes across the drivers in your fleet. You can then track your fleet’s progress so that you can manage their efficiency throughout the day. They also support API access, so you can pull their routing algorithm into your routing tool.

This App is sold at a budget price compared to its main competitors, and unlike Route4me, their pricing is transparent and easy to understand. They don’t do everything that an App like Route4me can do, but if you have a fleet of trucks making deliveries, this is worth putting on your list of apps to try out to see if it can meet your needs. If it does meet your needs and you don’t need the more complex things that Route4me does, you’ll save money. 

• Reference Customers: FedEx manifest integration. No case studies available. 

• Potential Issues: This is a small team and the product appears to be basic relative to some of its competitors. The App is overall well reviewed, but there are reports of people having difficulty using the app. In general, people like it but either don’t love it, or want a bit more from their routing software for their fleet of trucks making deliveries. Groups seem less satisfied than individual users. A lot of the difficulties reported were bugs, and a lot were complaints that the App does not do what people expect it to do. Also, there have been complaints about the lack of support. They only have support via email, which is enough for some users, but some people clearly want more. 

There are complaints about the limit they put on the number of optimizations that you can make every day. The company responded in a review that ‘daily optimization limits are clearly listed on all App descriptions and on our website's pricing page.’ So you’ll want to make sure that what you need to do will be covered here. 

The important thing here is to run a trial so you know that this will do what you need it to do, because it will be enough for some use cases and fall short in other use cases. 

• Demo: Web Demo here, Youtube channel here.

• Published price: here

Straight Away -

• Overview: Straight Away helps delivery route drivers who are given a manifest, or a written set of addresses every day, get those addresses into a digital map. You can plan multi-stop routes by taking a picture of a manifest, shipping label, or anything with an address, then Straight Away will use computer vision and AI to automatically add stops to your route and show it on a map. The differentiator for Straight Away compared to other apps is that it has turn by turn navigation right within their app, as opposed to launching Google Maps or Waze or Apple Maps to do your turn by turn nav. It’s not very clear why this is a big benefit, perhaps if your drivers have old android devices and switching apps is hard for some reason. 

If you have trucks doing deliveries, or if you have to deliver or pick up anything, and you get a paper list of addresses, Straight Away is definitely a routing App to try out to see if it will work for your needs. 

• Reference Customers: FedEx, United States Postal Service, Amazon, UPS, DHL, Ontrac, (case study here)

• Potential Issues: There are complaints about the quality of the ability to analyze a photo of the list of addresses and then read it all correctly and turn it into a correct route. Which makes sense, because that seems hard to do. If you are giving your truck drivers or delivery people paper lists of where they need to make their dropoffs, you should probably look for a way to give it to them digitally as a first step towards making your organization more efficient. 

There have been complaints about the App's behavior when routing the drivers. People say it will take them to the wrong places. There have been complaints of limited support. There have been complaints of the App having bugs and not behaving properly. There are also some features and capabilities that people felt should be there that aren’t.

We’re not sure there is a ton of value in not launching Google Maps or Waze or Apple Maps when you are doing turn by turn navigation. That is a pretty seamless experience on modern phones and tablets. And what these apps do really well is hard for a company with 7 employees to recreate. In the end, this is an App to try out to see if it will fit the needs of your drivers, especially if you are a driver that is being given a paper list of addresses everyday. 

• Demo: No demo’s available, youtube channel: none.

• Published price: here

RouteIQ -

• Overview: Build routes and visualize information about the points on your route with RouteIQ. Filter and colorize the pins on the map to get insights into the information. Build a Schedule that not only includes the stops that you have to make for work, but also your personal stops. Build heat and cluster maps to better understand your information. Connect your CRM data with iOS and Android. Focus on Zoho. 

• Reference Customers: none listed

• Potential Issues: There is not much of a footprint online for this App. No one works there, no reviews that we could find. Definitely a try-before-you-buy situation. 

• Demo: here

• Published price: here. Usage based Price based on number of points on the map. 

Planit -

• Overview: This App is focused on government uses for routing. It has been merged with a software company that is focused on staffing, scheduling, employment, and communication for government agencies. Focus on dispatch and emergency services. 

• Reference Customers: Sandy Police Dept, Palm Springs Police Dept, Kingston Township Police Dept. Ephrata Police Dept, Lincoln County Sheriff, Village of Evendale, More here. No case studies provided

• Potential Issues: There are not a lot of ratings, and what exists has some complaints about This is a routing software that is part of a suite of products for a specific vertical - governments. If you are not in that vertical this will not likely be a good fit, if you are in that vertical, this is definitely worth doing a trial. 

• Demo: video available here. 

• Published price: Not listed, but you can speak with a sales rep. 

(Sales Mapping Buyers Guide)