3 Route Planning Strategies for Holiday Season Last Mile Logistics
October 16, 2025
The holiday season is a sprint, not a marathon. It’s when your delivery operation faces the biggest stress test of the year with more orders, higher expectations, and less room for error. Parcels pile up, customers expect same-day or next-day fulfillment, and your drivers are pushed to the limit.
Manual route planning and printed maps simply can’t keep up. To win during peak season, your last mile operation needs a smart, proactive approach to route optimization that minimizes wasted miles, protects your drivers’ time, and keeps every package on schedule.
Here are three route planning strategies you should implement today to handle the rush smoothly and confidently.
Use Multi-Route Capacity Limit
During peak season, optimizing one long route isn’t enough. Your entire fleet must work in sync to deliver on time. MyRouteOnline’s multi-route option is purpose-built for this challenge.
The Strategy:
Instead of manually dividing orders among drivers, set clear capacity limits for your vehicles inside MyRouteOnline such as total stops, weight, or number of packages. The software automatically distributes delivery points across multiple routes in the most efficient way possible, ensuring high coverage with balanced workloads.
The Benefit:
No wasted truck space. No overloaded drivers. Every vehicle follows a carefully optimized route, improving delivery density so your teams can complete more stops per shift with fewer miles on the road.
Build in a Buffer
Holiday deliveries are slower, not because your team moves slower, but because holiday conditions slow everything down. Gates, signatures, instructions, and increased customer interactions all add minutes per stop.
The Strategy:
Temporarily increase your default “Service Time” parameter in MyRouteOnline. If it normally takes 2 minutes per stop, increase it to 3 or 4 minutes. The route planner automatically adjusts delivery sequences and ETAs to reflect this realistic pace.
The Benefit:
Less stress, fewer late routes, and happier customers. By acknowledging real-world service conditions, you prevent unrealistic scheduling and ensure drivers can perform efficiently even under heavy load.
Navigate Hands-Off with MyRoute App
Even the best-planned route can fall apart if your drivers can’t execute it easily. That’s why the MyRoute app, the mobile companion to MyRouteOnline, is essential for last-mile excellence , especially when things are busiest.
The Strategy:
After planning and optimizing routes on the desktop planner, export them directly to the MyRoute mobile app. The app integrates with navigation tools like Google Maps or Waze and provides drivers with clear turn-by-turn directions.
The Benefit:
The MyRoute app eliminates confusion by giving drivers one unified platform for navigation, route execution, and real-time tracking.
Key features that make it stand out:
- Multiple-stop navigation: Plan up to 1,000 deliveries and follow a clear sequence from your phone.
- Dynamic flexibility: Drivers can re-order stops, add or skip destinations if needed, and instantly refresh their routes.
- Real-time notifications: Stay informed about upcoming stops or route changes on the go.
- Seamless integration: Export optimized routes directly from MyRouteOnline to the app in one click. No spreadsheets or paper printouts required.
This mobile-first workflow keeps the planning and execution perfectly in sync, ensuring that drivers have everything they need at their fingertips. It’s fast, intuitive, and built for peak-season precision.
Bonus Strategy: Stay Cloud-Connected for Instant Updates
Peak season tends to bring mid-day surprises because of customer cancellations, weather delays, or last-minute deliveries. MyRouteOnline’s cloud-based system allows managers to update routes and reassign workloads instantly. Export revised routes again via the app to ensure your team stays synchronized, no matter what the day throws at them.
Making the Most of Peak Season
Preparation is power. By combining these three strategies, you’ll transform logistical chaos into a well-oiled delivery operation.
Whether you manage a small team or operate a national fleet, MyRouteOnline and the MyRoute app offer the scalability, visibility, and simplicity you need to outperform the competition this holiday season.
