How Many Drops Can a Multi-Drop Driver Do in a Day?

The calculation

Drops per day = time available for deliveries / (average drop time + average driving time between drops).

Time available for deliveries is the shift minus everything that isn't delivering: loading at the depot, driving out to the first drop and back from the last, and breaks. It also has to sit inside the drivers' hours rules that apply to your vehicles. For vans under the GB domestic rules that's an 11-hour duty limit, and drop time counts as duty (see GB domestic vs EU drivers' hours).

Worked examples

Take a 10-hour shift. Subtract 45 minutes of loading, 40 minutes driving out to the first drop and back from the last, and a 30-minute break. That leaves 485 minutes for deliveries. Then it depends on the round:

• Dense town round, 6 minutes per drop and 3 minutes between drops: 485 / 9, so about 53 drops
• Mixed suburban round, 8 minutes per drop and 6 minutes between drops: 485 / 14, so about 34 drops
• Rural round, 10 minutes per drop and 15 minutes between drops: 485 / 25, so about 19 drops

Drop time is the number most people get wrong

Driving time between drops is easy to estimate from a map. Drop time is harder, and it usually decides the answer. A B2B drop includes parking, unloading, getting it inside, getting a signature, and sometimes taking returns back. Planners tend to use a single default for every customer, which makes the busy town rounds look easier than they are and the quick drops look slower.

The best source is your own history. Planned versus actual finish times on past run sheets, or a week of drivers noting arrival and departure times, will give you a realistic drop time for each type of customer. A kitchen with a long trolley run and a corner shop with a door-front drop shouldn't share a number.

Other limits that cap the day

Sometimes the van fills up before the shift does. If a van holds 24 cages and the average order is one cage, the round is capped at 24 drops however quick they are, unless the van goes back to reload. Delivery windows cap it too: if half the customers want delivery before 10am, the morning becomes the bottleneck, and the afternoon can't make up for it.

Planning to a realistic number

Set each driver's maximum working hours a little below the legal limit to leave room for traffic and slow drops, then fit the round to that. In vRouted you set a drop time for each stop and a shift and maximum hours for each driver. Rounds are planned so they finish inside the shift with drop time counted, and drops that won't fit are flagged rather than planned late. The driver scheduling guide covers shifts in more detail.