You can plan a 50-stop delivery route in about five minutes if you load every address in one go, check the few that look wrong, optimise once and then lock in only the stops that truly can’t move. The time goes on typing and fixing addresses, not on the route itself.
Most couriers in Warsaw, Kraków and Wrocław still lose that time somewhere. Google Maps lets you add up to 9 stops, including the final destination, so a 50-stop day means splitting the run into six or more separate trips. Paid route planners help, but free plans are often small: Spoke (formerly Circuit), for example, lists a free plan of "Max 10 stops per route".
And the pressure is real. As one courier told Forbes.pl: "Jak mam 220 paczek i każda minuta się liczy, to nie jestem w stanie dzwonić" — with 220 parcels and every minute counting, there’s no time to phone anyone.
Here is a five-minute routine that works whatever app you use.
The 5-minute routine, step by step
Minute 0–1: Sort your parcels before you touch the phone
Don’t plan from a random pile. Put the parcels in the van roughly by area or postcode as you load them. It takes seconds per parcel and saves you hunting in the back later.
Set aside anything with a fixed time: a business that closes at 15:00, a customer who asked for the morning, a parcel locker you must hit before a collection. You will mark these in step 4.
Minute 1–3: Add all 50 addresses in one batch
This is where most of the five minutes goes, so pick the fastest input method for each parcel:
- Photograph the label. If your app reads labels from a photo, scan each parcel as you load it. No typing, fewer typos in street names such as Grzybowska or Świętokrzyska.
- Say the address. Voice input is quicker than typing Polish diacritics on a small keyboard. Say the street, number and town clearly, then glance at the result.
- Type only as a last resort. If you must type, start with the postcode and house number; it narrows the search fast.
Add every stop to one route. Splitting 50 stops into several short routes means you optimise each piece separately, and the joins between them are rarely the best order.
Minute 3–4: Check the addresses that look wrong
Before you optimise, scroll the list or the map once. You are looking for pins that sit far outside your area.
Couriers regularly complain that planners drop a pin in the wrong town. One review of Spoke on the App Store reads: "I type exact address and it gives me 490km away one." Village addresses with no street name are the usual culprits.
Quick fixes:
- Add the postcode and town to the address.
- For villages, use "village name + house number + postcode".
- If it still won’t resolve, drop the pin by hand on the map.
One bad pin can drag the whole route across the city, so this minute pays for itself.
Minute 4: Optimise once
Now press optimise. A route optimiser tries many possible orders and picks a short one. That’s the travelling salesman problem, and it’s exactly what a phone does far better than your head at 7 a.m.
Resist the urge to optimise, tweak, optimise again. Do it once with clean addresses and the result is usually good.
Minute 4–5: Lock in what can’t move, then go
Look at the first ten stops and the last ten. Do they make sense for your day?
- Move fixed-time stops to where they need to be.
- Put heavy or bulky parcels early if you want the van emptier sooner.
- Check that your first stop is close to the depot and your last stop is close to where you finish.
Then start navigating. If something changes mid-route — a new pickup, a closed street — add or remove that stop and re-optimise the rest instead of replanning from scratch.
Four mistakes that turn 5 minutes into 30
1. Planning in chunks of 9 or 10. If your tool caps stops per route, you end up stitching several mini-routes together by hand. You lose the time you meant to save, and the order between chunks is guesswork. Use a planner that takes all 50 stops at once.
2. Optimising with bad addresses. The optimiser can only work with the pins it’s given. A stop placed in the wrong village will be "visited" in the wrong place. Always do the one-minute address check first.
3. Trusting the ETA blindly. A Polish review of Spoke on Google Play complains that the time "jest błędnie odmierzany" — the driver never managed the route in the estimated time. Every planner estimates; none knows how long you’ll wait at a reception desk or for a lift. Add your own buffer for big office blocks and blocks of flats without a working intercom.
4. Ignoring parking. The shortest route on the map isn’t always the shortest day. Polish media reported in September that InPost couriers face penalties of up to 5,000 zł linked to how they stop at parcel lockers. When you review the first and last stops, think about where you can actually stop the van legally, and group nearby stops you can walk between.
Related reading: see how an optimised route compares in our test on 60 Polish delivery routes and read the definitive guide to route optimization for the methods behind it. You can run the routine above in the free route planner for up to 50 stops. All our guides and research in one place: route optimization guides and research.
Plan your next 50 stops free
Delivery Planner by City & Carrier is a free route planner for couriers on iOS and Android, built for exactly this routine:
- Up to 50 stops per route, free, with no limit on the number of routes (fair use).
- Photo of the label or voice input to add addresses without typing.
- One-click optimisation once your stops are in.
Load tomorrow’s parcels, follow the five steps above and see how long it takes you. Download Delivery Planner free.
