Route optimization helps fleets plan the most efficient routes for vehicles making deliveries or service stops based on various real-world constraints. With route optimization software, fleets can analyze multiple factors such as traffic patterns, vehicle capacity, driver schedules, and more all in real time. This enables them to automate the route planning process and determine the most cost-effective route for their delivery drivers.

Samsara’s routing and navigation solution is an end-to-end routing software that enables fleets to reduce cost and improve safety, compliance, and customer satisfaction. Samsara’s Route Planning, Route Execution, and Commercial Navigation functionality makes it possible for fleets to unify route planning, dispatch software, navigation, and telematics for deeper insights, proactive decision-making, and a competitive edge. Some key benefits include:

• Improved reliability and ease of use: Samsara's modern UI simplifies training and boosts efficiency, ensuring your operation never misses a beat. All backed by a 99.99% uptime SLA and the highest rated app by professional drivers.

• Optimized routes: Cut fuel consumption, minimize vehicle wear, maximize fleet utilization, and improve worker productivity with optimized routes tailored to your organization's operational priorities.

• Increased customer satisfaction: Deliver exceptional customer service with on-time deliveries and build trust with live order tracking if exceptions occur. Keep drivers and dispatch in sync with consistent ground truth, ETAs, and navigation paths. You can also track performance over time to refine routing, train drivers, and improve operating procedures.

• Reduced distractions: Combine navigation and Hours of Service into a single, distraction-free interface; no more app-switching. Samsara navigation accounts for vehicle restrictions like height, weight, and hazmat. Drivers have peace of mind that they are on safe and compliant routes, all within the Samsara Driver App—the highest-rated by drivers on Android and iOS.

The best route planning software for a trucking fleet is able to create routes that are tailored to unique operations and constraints. For example, an optimized route should consider how many stops per route, how often orders change day-to-day, and whether planning, dispatch, and driver navigation need to work together or can stay separate. Many fleets end up piecing together a multi-stop route planner, a separate dispatch tool, and a third navigation app, which creates gaps in visibility between teams. 

Samsara's fleet management solution combines Route Planning, Route Execution, and Commercial Navigation with fleet telematics and safety in one driver app, enabling fleets to unify their routing operations on a single platform. Some key benefits include:

• Improved reliability and ease of use: Samsara's modern UI simplifies training and boosts efficiency, ensuring your operation never misses a beat. All backed by a 99.99% uptime SLA and the highest rated app by professional drivers.

• Optimized routes: Cut fuel consumption, minimize vehicle wear, maximize fleet utilization, and improve worker productivity with multi-stop route planning tailored to your organization's operational priorities.

• Increased customer satisfaction: Deliver exceptional customer service with on-time deliveries and build trust with live order tracking if exceptions occur. Keep drivers and dispatch in sync with consistent ground truth, ETAs, and navigation paths. You can also track performance over time to refine routing, train drivers, and improve operating procedures.

• Reduced distractions: Combine navigation and Hours of Service into a single, distraction-free interface; no more app-switching. Samsara navigation accounts for vehicle restrictions like height, weight, and hazmat. Drivers have peace of mind that they are on safe and compliant routes, all within the Samsara Driver App—the highest-rated by drivers on Android and iOS.

Commercial trucks operate under very different physical constraints than passenger vehicles. Factors such as height, weight, length, and hazardous materials cargo all determine which roads and bridges a given truck can safely use. Standard consumer mapping apps like Google Maps, Apple Maps, MapQuest, or Waze aren't built to account for these restrictions, so they may route a truck onto a road or bridge that can’t safely support it. This may lead to accidents, vehicle damage, and increased costs.

Samsara's Commercial Navigation is built specifically to close this gap, providing turn-by-turn driving directions tailored to each vehicle's restrictions through configurable, lockable navigation profiles that admins assign, plus Avoidance Zones that automatically steer drivers away from predefined high-risk or restricted areas. 

Customers like TP Trucking & Logistics leveraged Samsara Commercial Navigation to get truck-safe routing with Hours of Service (HOS) visible on the same screen, reducing the devices they need to manage on the road. In a 90-day period, they avoided 180 commercial-restricted roads, including 10 low bridges and 82 weight-limited roads, across more than 160,000 miles. As a result of standardizing navigation, TP Trucking cut out-of-route miles and delays caused by drivers getting lost, ultimately reducing service failures by 90%.

On-time delivery performance depends on building an optimized route plan, and having visibility into how that plan actually holds up once drivers are on the road. Some routing tools can design the shortest route, but may have limited visibility. This makes it difficult for dispatchers to know exactly where or why a route fell behind until a customer complains. 

Samsara closes that gap by providing fleets with real-time visibility when drivers are operating on the road. With Plan vs. Actual reporting, dispatchers can compare planned routes to what really happened so teams can identify exactly where plans break down and what to adjust next time. In addition, Samsara's Route Execution provides live ETAs and exception management so a deviation from the plan is flagged immediately rather than discovered after a customer complaint. Real-time impact analysis also lets planners see how an edit or exception will affect route duration and service-window risk before committing to a change. 

Mohawk Industries improved its on-time customer service rate by 5 percentage points, to 97%, after adopting Samsara's routing platform, while also reducing miles driven by 25%, and real-time impact analysis shows planners how edits will affect service-window risk before they commit to a change.

Routes that are not optimized can lead to significant operational costs and compliance issues, such as fines for restricted-road violations, property damage from low bridge strikes or oversized vehicles on unsuitable roads, and potential negative impacts to a carrier's CSA score after a violation or incident. These costs compound over time, since a poor safety or compliance record can also affect insurance premiums and audit risk.

Samsara’s Routing and Dispatch solution enables fleets to generate smarter, optimized routes, built for your operation’s real-world constraints. In addition, Samsara's Commercial Navigation reduces this exposure by keeping drivers on roads appropriate for their specific vehicle and cargo, using configurable navigation profiles and Avoidance Zones that automatically steer trucks away from unsafe or restricted areas, helping protect high-risk areas of an operation from fines and incidents while supporting a stronger compliance record over time.

Samsara offers an expansive integration ecosystem featuring over 350 API integrations through the App Marketplace, including integrations for routing and dispatch, transportation management systems (TMS), and more. 

Some integrations that Samsara offers include Aptean Routing & Scheduling, Appian DRTrack, Arrivy, Axon TMS, Bestpass Toll Genius, BOLT TMS, CAMS Prospero, Coach Manager, Route4Me, CSI Road, EBE Ships Imaging, Edulog, EKA Omni-TMS, EZ Routing, Elite EXTRA Routing & Dispatch, eLogii, Full Circle TMS, GLCS Suite Sync, InTow Manager, Korber K.Motion TMS, LoadOps, LoadTrek, MaxOptra, McLeod LoadMaster, Milsoft Utility Solutions, NextBillion.ai Route Optimization, NISC Enterprise, Prophesy Dispatch, Roadnet, Rose Rocket TMS, TMW.Suite, TMW TruckMate, TransPlus, Truckpedia, TMS-Dispatch Integration by XDS, Vektor TMS, Wynne Systems, and more.

Customers achieve significant return on investment (ROI) from leveraging Samsara routing and dispatch, driving improvements in efficiency and cost-savings. Here are a few examples:

• Estes: Achieved a 40% increase in ETA predictability and saved $3M in estimated fuel costs across a fleet of 10,400 tractors and 40,000+ trailers for the fourth largest LTL carrier in the United States and the largest privately held freight transportation company in North America.

• Mohawk Industries: Achieved a 40% increase in ETA predictability, reduced miles driven by 4.2M saving $7.75M, completed a one-time routing audit saving $650,000 in overpayments, cut communication time by 93%, reduced administrative work by 75%, removed 200 trailers saving $500,000 annually, and reduced idling by 12% saving $600,000 in fuel costs across a fleet running over one million miles every week.

• MAVIN: Improved customer visibility by 100%, lowered equipment breakdowns by 25% in one year, saved $15,000 in insurance costs, and cut two leased trailers saving $16,000 per year across their four-division wood products operation spanning 48 states.

• Kreilkamp Trucking: Reduced tardy deliveries by 15%, saved 187,000+ gallons of fuel compared to the annual industry average, reduced preventable incidents by 60%, and decreased driver turnover by 20% in one year across a fleet of 300+ drivers, 375+ vehicles, and 1,030+ trailers.

• TP Trucking & Logistics: Leveraged Samsara Commercial Navigation to avoid 180 commercial-restricted roads, including 10 low bridges and 82 weight-limited roads, across more than 160,000 miles. As a result, TP Trucking cut out-of-route miles and delays caused by drivers getting lost, ultimately reducing service failures by 90%.

• ITF Group: Achieved a 25% improvement in routing optimization, improved fuel efficiency from 6 MPG to 7.5 MPG saving $4M in fuel costs, reduced idle time to 29%, reduced trailer downtime by 25%, improved trailer utilization by 20%, and generated $8.4M in combined fuel and insurance savings across 2,000 trucks and trailers.

• VLS Environmental Solutions: Reduced overall mileage by 8%, reduced total fuel consumption by 6% saving over $350,000 annually, extended vehicle operational life by 15%, saved over $800,000 in annual auto claims, reduced fleet-wide CO2 emissions by 10%, and increased their alternative fuel fleet by 20% across 500+ vehicles at 50+ locations.

• NovaXpress: Adopted Samsara Commercial Navigation to design optimized routes tailored to each vehicle's restrictions, paired with Hours of Service (HOS) in a single in-cab app, keeping drivers safe and on schedule across a mixed fleet. By accounting for vehicle-specific restrictions, the team has avoided $10-12K per incident in bridge-strike repairs while reducing driver stress on the road and improving service delivery times.

• Athens-Clarke County: Achieved a 55% increase in fuel efficiency, eliminated 12,000 pieces of paper monthly, and improved the safety and efficiency of their services across a mixed fleet of 40 vehicles serving 130,000 residents across 117 square miles.

• Crafty: Achieved a 4% improvement in fuel usage in just three months, reached the top 10% for fuel efficiency compared to peer organizations, improved Safety Scores by 5%, and achieved a 33% year-over-year reduction in auto claims across 40 markets.

• City of New Orleans: Routed emergency vehicles to calls more efficiently across a fleet responding to nearly 70,000 emergency calls every year, reduced collision risk by 81%, decreased mobile phone use by 46%, reduced speeding by 37%, and gave commanders real-time asset visibility for faster resource allocation across 41 city departments.

• Monroe County: Improved outage response time by 15% and saved thousands on vehicle maintenance across nearly 1,700 islands that make up the Florida Keys using real-time GPS tracking to locate and dispatch the nearest available resources during emergencies.

• CoxHealth: Integrated Samsara GPS tracking through their open API with their computer-aided dispatch system across 106 vehicles including 55 ambulances, reduced maintenance invoice processing time by 94%, and gave dispatch teams real-time vehicle location data that improved emergency resource coordination across five counties in the Missouri Ozarks.

• Hope Gas: Replaced a system where field supervisors had no GPS capabilities, achieved a 20% decrease in excessive idling, reduced catastrophic vehicle failures by an estimated 12%, and recovered a stolen side-by-side valued at $40,000 across natural gas operations serving 125,000 customers in West Virginia.

• City of Syracuse: Used Samsara's Esri integration to create a publicly accessible real-time map showing snow plow service status, reducing citizen calls by 30% across a fleet of 1,000 vehicles including 150 snow removal vehicles. COO Corey Dunham stated, "Not only do community members appreciate the transparency Samsara provides, but it's also saved staff time spent responding to calls and made things overall more efficient."

• Cash-Wa Distributing: Decreased customer credits paid for improper temperature claims by 30% and saved $60,000 annually on cellular data plans using GPS tracking alongside Environmental Monitors across a distribution network of 20,000+ items across 11 states.

• Certarus: Saved $500,000 in maintenance costs, saved 8,500 hours from digitized billing, and contributed to $100M+ in new contracted revenue by providing detailed chain-of-custody reports for customers' compliance needs across 19 locations.

• Buckeye Power Sales: Generated an estimated $300,000 in additional annual revenue by redeploying underutilized generators to billable jobs, saved 250+ technician hours annually, recovered an excavator from a non-paying customer collecting $12,000 in outstanding billing, and intervened via geofence alert when a rental unit was moved 90 minutes from its contracted location.

• MBTA: Improved bus predictability and reliability by 10% across 177 routes and 1,050 buses carrying 450,000+ passengers in Greater Boston using Samsara Vehicle Gateways and open API. Head of Projects Siobhan Cunningham stated, "If we see that a bus did miss a stop, we can look up who was driving that bus and figure out exactly what happened."

• All Aboard America: Increased revenue by 30% through amended pricing based on actual operating cost data, reduced administrative workload by 20%, and saved $1.6M annually across 6 divisions and 1,000+ buses and drivers driving 30M miles annually.

• Caddo Parish Public Schools: Replaced a GPS system that updated at 15-minute intervals with Samsara real-time GPS tracking, reduced parent inquiry calls by 35%, saved $420,000 by recovering three stolen school buses, achieved a 100% decrease in major incidents, and now operate $2M under their previous annual budget.

• Houston ISD: Integrated Samsara with EZ Routing to create a unified transportation dashboard that tracks planned versus actual route performance in real time. This integration allowed the district to move from ad hoc, anecdotal knowledge about bus timeliness to a quantified, data-driven view of service delivery that could be used to make informed decisions about route design and resourcing. The district is now completing 94% of scheduled routes and achieving 92-95% on-time arrival performance, a dramatic improvement.

• DHL: Consolidated seven separate point solutions into one platform, reduced harsh driving incidents by 65%, cut accidents by 26%, reduced accident-related costs by 49%, decreased driver turnover by 50%, and improved their CSA score by 10% across a logistics operation serving 220+ countries.

• Werner Enterprises: Gained consistent real-time visibility into an 8,000-vehicle fleet driving three million miles every day, achieved a 19-year low in DOT-reportable accidents, reduced accident rates by 22%, decreased harsh braking by 20%, and cut harsh turns by 50%.

• Jordan Carriers: Reduced safety events by 50%, decreased drivers needing daily coaching by 93%, cut connected training setup time by 50%, and freed dispatch teams to focus on operational coordination rather than safety administration across a fleet of 800 vehicles and 800 drivers.

• LAZ Parking: Unified siloed data systems across 1,500+ vehicles in 29 states and Canada, eliminated 40+ hours of data entry each week, and won a record-breaking $370M contract. 

• Joyride Logistics: Drove 13M miles incident-free, improved driver retention by 28% in one year, and gave customers real-time visibility into delivery performance using Samsara as their single source of truth via open API.

• Quality Custom Distribution: Replaced a manual ETA tracking process with real-time GPS visibility across 25 locations serving major brands like Starbucks, Raising Cane's, and Chipotle, eliminated drowsy driving crashes entirely within six months, and achieved a five-year low CSA score.

• Ferrellgas: Consolidated five separate communication channels into one using the Samsara Driver App, improved driver efficiency scores by 33%, and saved 10% on fuel in the first year across a fleet of 4,000 vehicles delivering propane across all 50 states and Puerto Rico.