How to Define Your Snow Plowing Route?

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Snow plowing service providers are the unsung heroes of the frosty season!

When the snow storms hit, you brave the cold to ensure the safety and convenience of your clients. Immense responsibility sits on your shoulders.

Snow plowing is not just about clearing the streets. It requires careful planning and execution. With every snowflake that falls, you face a unique set of challenges – from unpredictable weather conditions to varying terrain and limited time frames.

Finding the most efficient route to clear the snow and keep your clients’ properties safe and accessible can be a daunting task.

Don’t worry! In this blog, we’ll discuss how you can plan effective snow-plowing routes with the help of route optimization software.

Route optimization means finding the most efficient route not only in terms of distance but also in terms of time. But manual route planning can be a tedious task and is often prone to errors. The higher the number of addresses to be visited, the more complex manual route planning gets.

Add to it constraints like the variety of vehicles, availability of drivers, and time windows.

However, you can plan your daily routes easily and more accurately with the help of route optimization software.

How route optimization benefits in snow plowing?

Saves time

By optimizing your snow plowing route, you can significantly reduce travel time. A well-planned route ensures that you take the most direct and efficient paths, minimizing unnecessary detours and backtracking. It helps you serve more areas in the same amount of time. This means you can take on more clients and ultimately boost your revenue.

Saves costs

Route optimization helps you save costs as it lowers your fuel consumption. When the vehicles follow optimized routes, they travel lesser miles and you spend less money on gas.

Saves planning time

A route planner provides you with optimized routes within seconds which would have otherwise taken you hours to plan manually. You won’t have to solely depend on the experience of your drivers for a dynamic task like snow plowing.

Assign vehicle and driver as per requirement

Efficient route planning helps you better manage your resources. By knowing exactly where your crews need to be at any given time, you can allocate personnel and equipment accordingly. If a particular area requires a snow melter or an ice removal machine instead of a snow plow, you can add the constraint while planning the route.

Read more: Skill-based Job Assignment

Improves customer satisfaction

Timeliness is key in snow plowing. With optimized routes, you can ensure prompt and reliable service to your clients. By arriving at each property in a timely manner, you minimize the inconvenience caused by snow-covered driveways and pathways, enhancing customer satisfaction. Happy customers are more likely to become repeat clients and recommend your services to others.

Read more: Improve Customer Service Using Zeo’s Route Planner

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Driver tracking

Route optimization software enables you to track the live location of the drivers. This helps in ensuring that the work is progressing as planned without any obstacles. The location can also be shared with the clients to keep them updated.

How to plan your snow plowing route using Zeo?

Zeo Route Planner is an easy-to-use and affordable route planner. It helps you plan optimized routes in an efficient manner. It can be used by individual snow plowing service providers as well as for businesses with fleets of snow plows. The route planner is easily scalable as the size of your business grows and you increase the number of territories served.

Hop on a 30-minute demo call and find out how Zeo makes snow-plowing routes efficient!

Steps for route planning:

1. Step 1: In the dashboard, create profiles of the various vehicles and drivers in your fleet. You may have different types of vehicles – snow plows, snow melters, ice removal machines, etc. And different drivers may be adept at driving different vehicles.
2. Step 2: You can import the addresses from a Google sheet or an Excel file. You can also add the addresses by performing a Google search within the Zeo dashboard. You can specify the start location and end location.
3. Step 3: Add details for each stop. In addition to the customer details, also add the constraints like stop priority (ASAP/normal) or the time windows to visit the stop.
4. Step 4: Let the route planner optimize the route. Either it can automatically assign the route to your drivers or you can assign it manually.
5. Step 5: Your drivers can start the trip once it is assigned to them. As they progress with their work, they can keep updating the success/failure status in the driver app. It helps you keep track of the work.
6. Step 6: Once the trip is completed, you can use the reports available in the dashboard to analyze the routes. If some stops have taken longer time than expected then you can accordingly make adjustments to future routes.

Sign up for a FREE trial of Zeo Route Planner to start optimizing your routes right away!

Conclusion

Now you can easily define your snow plowing routes with the help of Zeo Route Planner! Use route optimization as a tool that will help you stand out from your competition by providing exceptional customer service!