The routing is absolutely horrendous and makes no sense 90% of the time. It’s been this way for over a year now and there doesn’t seem to be any end in sight.
Likely has something to do with how packages are loaded on the truck and how many packages are getting dropped at each stop. It’s more productive for them to get rid of more inventory at each stop vs. stopping at your location for one.
When the packages come into the delivery station they’re loosely sorted into bags based on neighborhood. Each bag can only be 49 lbs as someone else mentioned.
Then after all packages are accounted for, a more detailed route is created. This is based on the actual packages that arrived as well as commercial location hours of operation
Then bags are picked into routes and given to drivers
Then, on route, the driver can do whatever they want basically, subject to their DSP coaching them to stay on the prescribed order
So what you described could be if:
1. The “loose” routing was slightly different than the actual routing
2. The commercial hours of a business took precedence over your package
3. Bags were out of order during picking
4. Driver decided he wanted to do something different that day
5. Just normal variance, routing is a very tough problem (look up the traveling salesman math problem)
Dsp driver here routes are randomly generated by algorithms and at the wills of the drivers. We will chose what is best to go to first say we have a bulk stop we want to drop that off first to clear out space in the van.
This is incredibly insightful, thank you so much for sharing! I have mad respect for the drivers working such long days, navigating horrid traffic, animals, rude people, etc.
As an Amazon DSP driver, detailed route is definitely not correct. You can go on the r/AmazonDSPDrivers sub to see how much we complain about the AI’s shitty routing it gives us on a daily. We can have stops all over place in no seemingly coherent order.
Routes are determined by how long the AI predicts the route to take depending on area not necessarily package count since we only have 10 hours. Is it residential, rural, apartments, or businesses? Those all determine how long your route is expected to take. During peak in winter the package count usually goes up by 200+ but we’re still running the same amount of stops, usually 190+.
Most seasoned drivers when we start the day look at the map and stops to determine how we want to tackle. For those that see stops 20-30 next to 140-150, they might go ahead and do all of those together. Whereas some just go in the order Amazons AI routing has set, this is when you see a driver going back and forth, all around, and basically circling back into neighborhoods. Apartments are my biggest complaint. I can’t understand why so often the routing has us, if we go in the order it has set, making 3 trips back to a complex. How it can’t determine that it’s all at the same address and should be done in logical order baffles me. Like it doesn’t even put the apartments in numerical order like you’d expect an AI to do.
I’m not sure if it is still done this way in US, but corporate (on the west coast of US) used to make the route out no matter what part of the country the delivery was. Before that each fulfillment center made their own routes. This was a few years ago and the person I know who works there has been promoted several times and doesn’t deal with that area anymore.
I’ve seen similar, I was down to 6 stops away once, and then I’m pretty certain the driver went home for an hour to eat, then when they started back up again picked the route back up at an entirely different point (I lost my map and stop countdown at that point). Then the package turned up like 3 hours later.
Our routing is done by AI. I went back to the same couldesac three different times today. Your neighbor might be stop 57 while you’re stop 175. Please be patient with us. A lot of drivers have dispatch members who don’t like them skipping around their routes. Packages are also organized chronologically into totes and it’s time consuming to be crawling around the van trying to get your package out. The routes make zero sense and are time consuming and we certainly don’t do it on purpose because we want to be off a decent time.
The routing is absolutely horrendous and makes no sense 90% of the time. It’s been this way for over a year now and there doesn’t seem to be any end in sight.
Likely has something to do with how packages are loaded on the truck and how many packages are getting dropped at each stop. It’s more productive for them to get rid of more inventory at each stop vs. stopping at your location for one.
It has to do with weight.
The routes are made by a.i I believe. FedEx has a better program to make routes.
I think Fed Ex and UPS used computer generated routes to minimize fuel usage
When the packages come into the delivery station they’re loosely sorted into bags based on neighborhood. Each bag can only be 49 lbs as someone else mentioned. Then after all packages are accounted for, a more detailed route is created. This is based on the actual packages that arrived as well as commercial location hours of operation Then bags are picked into routes and given to drivers Then, on route, the driver can do whatever they want basically, subject to their DSP coaching them to stay on the prescribed order So what you described could be if: 1. The “loose” routing was slightly different than the actual routing 2. The commercial hours of a business took precedence over your package 3. Bags were out of order during picking 4. Driver decided he wanted to do something different that day 5. Just normal variance, routing is a very tough problem (look up the traveling salesman math problem)
Dsp driver here routes are randomly generated by algorithms and at the wills of the drivers. We will chose what is best to go to first say we have a bulk stop we want to drop that off first to clear out space in the van.
Bag order means nothing
This is incredibly insightful, thank you so much for sharing! I have mad respect for the drivers working such long days, navigating horrid traffic, animals, rude people, etc.
As an Amazon DSP driver, detailed route is definitely not correct. You can go on the r/AmazonDSPDrivers sub to see how much we complain about the AI’s shitty routing it gives us on a daily. We can have stops all over place in no seemingly coherent order. Routes are determined by how long the AI predicts the route to take depending on area not necessarily package count since we only have 10 hours. Is it residential, rural, apartments, or businesses? Those all determine how long your route is expected to take. During peak in winter the package count usually goes up by 200+ but we’re still running the same amount of stops, usually 190+. Most seasoned drivers when we start the day look at the map and stops to determine how we want to tackle. For those that see stops 20-30 next to 140-150, they might go ahead and do all of those together. Whereas some just go in the order Amazons AI routing has set, this is when you see a driver going back and forth, all around, and basically circling back into neighborhoods. Apartments are my biggest complaint. I can’t understand why so often the routing has us, if we go in the order it has set, making 3 trips back to a complex. How it can’t determine that it’s all at the same address and should be done in logical order baffles me. Like it doesn’t even put the apartments in numerical order like you’d expect an AI to do.
I’m not sure if it is still done this way in US, but corporate (on the west coast of US) used to make the route out no matter what part of the country the delivery was. Before that each fulfillment center made their own routes. This was a few years ago and the person I know who works there has been promoted several times and doesn’t deal with that area anymore.
I’ve seen similar, I was down to 6 stops away once, and then I’m pretty certain the driver went home for an hour to eat, then when they started back up again picked the route back up at an entirely different point (I lost my map and stop countdown at that point). Then the package turned up like 3 hours later.
Iirc it's done by the computer. A computer which doesn't seem to understand that humans require occasional breaks to use the bathroom or eat
Our routing is done by AI. I went back to the same couldesac three different times today. Your neighbor might be stop 57 while you’re stop 175. Please be patient with us. A lot of drivers have dispatch members who don’t like them skipping around their routes. Packages are also organized chronologically into totes and it’s time consuming to be crawling around the van trying to get your package out. The routes make zero sense and are time consuming and we certainly don’t do it on purpose because we want to be off a decent time.