Many road users know the perils of following navigation apps to the letter. Those who have been directed down narrow roads on the ‘quickest’ route to a destination will understand that the shortest distance is not always the quickest route. What can be a frustrating experience for the casual driver can have more serious repercussions for those operating enterprise truck fleets.
Milk Haulage
When Milk Truck drivers are forced to navigate roads which are too small or in bad condition it can lead to a waste of time and money, not to mention the toll it takes on the driver. Similarly, access restrictions and the locations of multiple bulk tanks on larger farms can greatly affect milk pickup turnaround times. When this data is excluded from route calculations, drivers are left frustrated as transport managers promote incomplete plans. For this reason the team at OptaHaul – the only route optimisation platform dedicated to the needs of the dairy industry – has introduced OptaMap.
Knowledge is power
Enterprise route optimisation solutions such as OptaHaul use industry leading map services (e.g. HERE, ArcGIS, OpenSteetMap) for location services and visualisation layers. While they are undoubtedly good services, in the context of milk transport routing they miss vital information on smaller roads and farms. Without this data its difficult to create truly accurate and optimised route plans. OptaMap bridges this gap by allowing transport planners and hauliers to add their knowledge of the local terrain and farms to route plans. The result is the best of both worlds – automated route optimisation with the added benefit of local geographical knowledge.
OptaMap brings previously unattainable levels of accuracy to milk truck route optimisation.
Using OptaMap along with OptaHaul’s core route optimisation platform, transport managers and hauliers can complement route plans with their own experience to improve accuracy, reliability and usability. Some examples include :
Exclude entire roads which are unsuitable for milk trucks from route optimisation calculations.
Add missing entrance roads to farms, factories and depots to route optimisation calculations.
Exclude unsuitable turns from route optimisation calculations.
At OptaHaul we are dedicated to the dairy industry and are committed to providing technology based solutions to real world problems for cooperatives, processors, hauliers and farmers.
Get in touch today to discuss how you can use modern technology to uncover new transport efficiencies.