trakki
Drive times in field sales: why the day runs long
By Manuel Ober · · 6 min read
The hour that goes missing every day
You plan six visits, manage five and get home later than you thought. That is not down to you. It is lots of small items: a few minutes per drive, a few per visit, and in the end an hour is missing. It is missing in the evening at the last customer, or at the dinner table at home.
The sat nav is not to blame. When you set off it tells you how long the next drive takes, and that is usually right. What it does not tell you, on the Friday before, is whether six visits fit into Tuesday.
The sat nav knows the drive, the plan needs the day
For weekly planning you need the drive times of all the legs of a day before you set off. With six visits that is seven legs: from home to customer 1, five legs in between, and from customer 6 back home.
With Google Maps this is possible, but it is manual work. Type the next stop, read off the time, write it down, next stop. Seven times a day, 35 times a week. If you swap two visits because one is only open in the afternoon, you start again from the beginning. Hardly anyone does that every Friday. So people guess: “To Amstetten it's half an hour.” When you guess, you think of the best drive, not the typical one.
That is the first item: the drive time in the plan is shorter than the one the sat nav shows later.
Four items no drive time includes
Even if all seven legs are right, four things are missing.
Arriving and leaving. Finding a parking space, walking to the entrance, waiting until someone has time, and walking back to the car afterwards. At a pharmacy in a pedestrian zone that is easily ten minutes. Add five to ten minutes per visit, depending on the location.
Opening hours. If the pharmacy is closed from 12:30 to 14:00 and you set off at 12:45, you are not inside in 20 minutes but in 75: you stand at the door at 13:05 and wait until 14:00. Opening hours decide the order, and the order decides the drive times.
The break. If you do not plan one, you take it anyway, just at the wrong time in the wrong place. Plan half an hour for lunch, ideally where a customer happens to be closed.
The time of day. The same route through Linz often takes noticeably longer at 8 o'clock than at 11. Your sat nav allows for that on the day, not in a plan made on Friday. For city routes at rush hour, plan a few minutes more.
The sixth item: when someone cancels
If the third customer cancels on Tuesday at nine, the day is a different one. The drive from customer 2 to customer 4 is not the one from 2 to 3. Perhaps a customer now fits in between who would have been due on Thursday.
With a sat nav and a notebook you recalculate at the roadside. Mostly you do not recalculate, you just drive, and the day comes apart. A plan that recalculates the rest of the day as soon as a visit drops out is better.
Prevention helps too. Two fixed appointments as a frame and four free visits in between survive even a day with a cancellation. Keep a due customer in mind near each fixed appointment, so you can use the gap.
An example day, once guessed and once calculated
Five customers in a rural territory, start at 8 o'clock from home. The figures are made up, but typical.
| Leg | Guessed | Calculated |
|---|---|---|
| Home to customer 1 | 25 min | 31 min |
| Customer 1 to customer 2 | 15 min | 22 min |
| Customer 2 to customer 3 | 20 min | 28 min |
| Customer 3 to customer 4 | 10 min | 19 min |
| Customer 4 to customer 5 | 20 min | 26 min |
| Customer 5 to home | 30 min | 41 min |
| Total | 2 h 00 | 2 h 47 |
A difference of 47 minutes, and that is without parking, without a lunchtime closure and without a cancellation. With everything in, it is more than an hour. That is the difference between “home at 17:00” and “home at 18:15”.
How many customer visits a day are realistic?
It comes down to two numbers: how long a visit takes and how far apart your customers are. Work it out like this: working day minus break, divided by visit, arriving and one drive. Add one more drive for the trip home in the evening.
A worked example with a day from 8:00 to 17:00, half an hour's break and ten minutes of arriving per visit. In the countryside a drive takes 28 minutes on average, as in the example day above; in town it takes 12.
| Visit length | Countryside | Town |
|---|---|---|
| 45 minutes | 5 visits | 7 visits |
| 30 minutes | 7 visits | 9 visits |
These are not industry figures but the arithmetic with these assumptions. Put in your own numbers. If you keep one visit a day free that can drop out, plan one fewer. Anyone who plans six visits and manages five is usually planning with shorter drives than they actually drive.
How to win the time back
- Calculate all the legs of the day, not just the next one.
- Give every visit five to ten minutes for arriving. Fixed in the plan, not in your head.
- Record each customer's opening hours once. Then every plan calculates with them.
- Put the break where a customer is closed anyway. That saves a detour.
- Leave one visit per day free that may drop out without the others wobbling.
- Recalculate when someone cancels, instead of guessing again.
Done by hand, that is more work than most people take on every Friday. That is why it is the job of a route planner, not of the sat nav. How the whole week comes together is in Route planning in field sales. More everyday tips, from planning the week on Friday to the note in the car, are collected in Field sales tips.
How trakki does it
For each day, trakki calculates the road drive times between all the stops and fits the day into your customers' opening hours, lunchtime closures included. It puts your lunch break where it gets in the way least. Between two visits you see the drive time. If you move a visit or one drops out, the rest of the day is recalculated.
trakki does not know about rush-hour traffic. It calculates with road drive times in free-flowing traffic. If a road drive time is missing for a leg, it is marked “straight-line estimate”. To set off, trakki opens Google Maps, Apple Maps or Waze, because for the single drive the sat nav is the right tool.
You can look at trakki in the browser with sample customers. More on the home page.
Frequently asked questions
Isn't Google Maps with several stops enough?
For the drive on the day itself, yes. For planning, no. Google Maps knows neither your customers' opening hours nor a visit length, a break or a due date. It calculates the route between stops that you give it. Choosing the stops and putting them in order is the actual planning.
How many customer visits a day are realistic?
With 45 minutes per visit, usually five in the countryside and seven in town; with short 30-minute visits, seven to nine. That is a worked example for a day from 8:00 to 17:00 with a break and time for arriving; the calculation is above. If you keep one visit free that can drop out, it is one fewer.
How accurate are calculated drive times?
Calculated road drive times are usually closer to reality than guesses from memory. Traffic jams, accidents and roadworks are not included. That is what the free visit per day is for. At the end of a week, compare plan and reality and you will see which routes take you longer than calculated.
Does trakki also work outside Austria?
No, trakki starts in Austria. The address search only finds Austrian addresses. trakki is not meant for customers abroad at the moment.