Optimizing route order

One button reorders a crew's day for the shortest real-world drive. In a typical 4-6 person operation it shaves 30-40% off weekly drive time.

Assigning customers to a crew and a day is half the job. The other half is putting them in the right order. A 14-stop day visited in a smart order can be a one-truck eight-hour shift. The same 14 stops in the wrong order can run past dark. Mowzey's Optimize button uses the Mapbox Optimized Trips API to figure that out for you in a few seconds.

How optimization works

Mowzey is built on Mapbox for both map rendering and route optimization. When you click Optimize, the Optimized Trips API takes every stop assigned to that crew and day, plus a starting point, and returns the shortest path through all of them using real road data — actual streets, turn restrictions, one-ways, and average drive times. Not straight-line distance.

The result comes back as a reordered list of stops. The map redraws the route line. The order your crew sees on the Schedule page updates automatically.

How to optimize a route

1
Open Schedule → Builder. Make sure every customer for the crew/day you want to optimize is already assigned.
2
Find the crew/day section in the sidebar (for example, L1 — Tuesday). At the top of the section you'll see an Optimize button.
3
Click it. Mowzey calls Mapbox, reorders the stops, and refreshes the map. The whole round trip is usually under three seconds.
4
Above the stop list you'll now see two numbers: total drive time and stop count. Use these to gut-check the day length and to compare before and after if you're tuning a route.

What changes when you optimize

Optimization changes the order of stops, not the assignments. A customer assigned to L1 on Tuesday stays on L1/Tuesday — they just move up or down the list. No customer is moved to a different crew or day by Optimize.

The new order applies to every recurring instance of that crew/day going forward. The next eight weeks of Tuesday-L1 jobs all use the optimized sequence until you add stops, remove stops, or re-optimize.

Recurring auto-spawn

Recurring jobs auto-generate eight weeks ahead of today in the order the route is currently optimized in. Adding a new customer mid-month doesn't break the existing eight weeks — but you should re-optimize so future weeks pick up the new stop in the right slot.

When not to auto-optimize

The button is fast and usually right. But there are real cases where a human ordering beats a math ordering:

  • You always start on one side of town. Maybe your crew lives south of the metro and you want them to always start at the southernmost stop and work north. Mapbox will pick whichever endpoint is shortest overall, which may not be yours.
  • You always end near the dump. If you haul yard waste and the dump is on the west side, you want the last stop of the day to be west. Optimize won't know that.
  • Customer time windows. A property manager who needs the back gate open before 10am pins that stop to the morning regardless of distance.
  • Big-dog or sprinkler windows. A customer's dog is in the yard until 11am, or the sprinklers run until 9am. The optimal order ignores these but you can't.

For these cases, optimize first, then drag the pinned-time stops manually into the slot they need to be in. The rest of the route stays close to optimal.

How much time can you actually save?

In a typical 4-6 person operation with two crews and 100-180 weekly stops, switching from a hand-built route to one Mowzey has optimized cuts weekly drive time by 30-40%. That usually translates to one extra job per crew per day or one earlier afternoon to go home. Either one is real money or real time back.

The savings get smaller as your routes are already tight. If you've been routing the same neighborhoods for a decade and never make mistakes, you may only see single-digit gains. But almost no one is actually operating at the optimum by hand.