Collection route optimization: cutting rounds without cutting service

A typical municipal collection plan is layers upon layers of history: a neighborhood added in 2015, a route split after a wave of complaints, a pruning round left over from the previous term. Nobody rebuilt it from scratch, because nobody really knows what happens in the field. The result is almost always the same: some routes are overloaded, and some are over-planned - and paid for every month.

The first step is not an algorithm, it is measurement. When every truck actually reports which streets it covered, how many bins it lifted and how long each segment took, a few weeks produce a true load map. Then the surprises start: routes finishing two hours early, streets collected twice by mistake, and areas running a half-empty truck.

On top of the true map you can do real optimization: merge routes, balance workdays, match frequency to actual volume. Among our customers, cutting redundant rounds translated into one truck off the road - on the order of $33,000 a year per truck, before fuel and wear. And without touching service levels: you collect by real need, not by habit.

Worth stating what this is not: it is not a contractor-replacement project, and not 'software that will fix everything'. The contractor keeps working; what changes is that planning and settlement lean on data both sides can see. In most cases the contractor actually gains - fewer arguments, fewer fines, a saner work plan for his drivers.

Where to start? One month of quiet measurement on the existing fleet, changing nothing. At the end of the month you hold a numeric answer to 'how much slack is in our plan' - and from there the decisions are easy.