Route Optimisation for Field Teams: Fewer Kilometres, More Jobs
Your technicians leave the depot with a morning route drawn by gut feel. By lunch they have criss-crossed the city, burned diesel that never paid for a job, and still have stops left that will slip into tomorrow.
We build the route planning that sequences every stop for fuel saved and jobs completed.
Sound Familiar?
These are the exact issues ops directors brought us before route optimisation:
- Morning routes drawn by gut feel leave technicians criss-crossing the same suburb twice
- Fuel invoices climb every month while jobs completed per day stay flat
- Dispatchers spend an hour sequencing stops by hand, then traffic scrapes the plan by 10am
- Late-day jobs slip because the first three stops wasted 40 minutes of backtracking
- Nobody can prove how many kilometres were avoidable until the fuel statement arrives
Inland diesel sits above R26 per litre as of August 2026, and industry research still finds field technicians losing 40%+ of the workday to travel and sequencing waste. Every kilometre you skip recovering is margin that does not come back.
What Route Optimisation Actually Does
Day's jobs in → best stop sequence out → techs drive less and finish more. No more gut-feel morning maps.
Jobs Land on the Board
Open jobs, addresses, skills, and time windows pull from your FSM or job sheet
Sequence Optimised
The algorithm orders stops for least drive time across the whole team, not one van at a time
Routes Push to Techs
Ordered stops land on the mobile app or nav the technician already uses
More Jobs, Less Fuel
Kilometres drop, on-time arrivals rise, and the fuel statement finally moves the right way
Everything You Need for Reliable Field Team Routing
Stop Sequence Optimisation
Jobs for the day are ordered for the shortest feasible path, not the order they landed in the inbox. Backtracking drops, and drive time falls with it.
Multi-Vehicle Route Planning
The whole field team is balanced across territories so one van is not overloaded while another idles with sparse stops.
Traffic-Aware Re-Sequencing
When a job cancels or runs long, the remaining stops re-order against live traffic so the afternoon does not unravel.
Skills and Parts Constraints
Routes honour certifications, van stock, and customer time windows so the shortest path is still a completable day.
Kilometre and Fuel Dashboards
Ops sees km per tech, fuel burn, and jobs per day side by side, so wasted kilometres show up before the monthly statement.
FSM and Map Sync
Optimised sequences push into your field service tool and mobile nav so technicians follow the plan without a second spreadsheet.
Platforms We've Wired for Route Optimisation
From 4.2 to 5.1 Jobs Per Tech Per Day
How a 12-technician Gauteng HVAC and electrical team cut daily kilometres 24% and pulled R142K off the annual fuel bill.
The Gut-Feel Morning Route
- Dispatcher sequenced stops by suburb name and "who is closest right now"
- Average 94 km per technician per day, with regular backtracking across the N1
- 4.2 completed jobs per tech per day before traffic ate the afternoon
- Fuel card spend roughly R59,000 per month at inland diesel prices
- Late jobs spilled into overtime three or four evenings a week
The Optimised Sequence
- Overnight optimiser sequences every open job against skills and time windows
- Average dropped to 71 km per technician per day (24% fewer kilometres)
- Jobs per tech rose to 5.1, unlocking nearly a full extra stop without hiring
- Fuel spend fell by about R11,800 per month, R142K over the first year
- On-time arrivals improved because the first stop was no longer a cross-city gamble
Before vs After Route Optimisation
How It Works
From first conversation to live route planning in 3–5 weeks.
Map Your Territory
How many technicians, typical stop density, peak-day volume, and where gut-feel routing hurts most.
Free Scoping Call
30-minute call to baseline kilometres and jobs per day, then design the optimiser against your constraints.
Build & Parallel Run
We wire the optimiser to your job board, run it beside your current morning plan for a week, and compare km and jobs.
Go Live & Monitor
Switch to the optimised sequence as default. Dashboards keep fuel and jobs-per-day visible so savings stick.
Frequently Asked Questions
How is route optimisation different from appointment scheduling?
Scheduling decides who does which job and when. Route optimisation decides the sequence of stops once the day's jobs are set, so technicians cover the least kilometres for the most completed work. We often connect both, but this page is about the map and the sequence.
How long does a field-team route optimisation project take?
A standard build takes 3–5 weeks from scoping to go-live. Simple single-fleet sequencing against an existing job board can be live in about two weeks. Multi-depot fleets with skills, parts, and SLA windows take closer to 5–6 weeks.
Will this disrupt technicians mid-day?
No. We run the optimiser beside your current morning plan first, then cut over once kilometres and on-time arrivals look right. Mid-day re-sequencing only fires when a job changes, and the update lands on the phone they already use.
What savings should we expect on fuel and kilometres?
Field fleets moving from dispatcher-built routes to automated optimisation typically cut drive time 15–30% and fuel 10–25%, depending on territory density. Geotab reports mileage reductions in the same 15–30% band. We size your payback against your own baseline week.
Which field service and mapping tools can you connect?
We have wired route optimisation into ServiceTitan, Jobber, FieldPulse, Google Maps Platform, HERE, and custom FSM or ERP job boards. If your system exposes jobs and addresses via an API or nightly export, we can feed the optimiser.
How much does route optimisation for field teams cost?
Simple one-way sequencing from an existing job board starts from around R25,000. Multi-vehicle optimisation with skills, traffic re-routing, and live dashboards typically ranges from R40,000 to R90,000. Most fleets of 8+ technicians recover the build cost within a few months of fuel and extra jobs alone.
Stop Paying for Routes Drawn by Gut Feel
If your field team still leaves the depot on a hand-built sequence, you are paying for fuel and lost jobs that route optimisation already recovers for fleets like yours.
Tell us how many technicians you run, what a heavy day looks like, and what the last fuel statement said. We will show you the kilometre and jobs-per-day lift a proper sequence would unlock.