Anew route optimisation ser-vice for light commercial vehicles has been launched by Postcode Anywhere, a web-based search facility.

The firm was started in 2000 purely as a postcode search website but has gradually expanded over the years with new services.

The Route Optimiser has been running experimentally for six months and is now ready to be rolled out to UK fleets.

No special equipment is needed – apart from a PC with internet access – as the service is purely web-based.

There is a licence charge and then fleet operators buy credits on a pay-as-you-go basis.

Once credits have been bought, the operator types in all the deliveries to be made in a day and the system picks the best routes to take.

Height and width restrictions are built into the service to avoid vehicles getting stuck under bridges and in narrow lanes.

Managing director Gary Mucklow told Fleet Van: “The online service uses sophisticated maths to plan the shortest routes for single vehicles or whole fleets and can save up to 30% per year in running costs.”

A van driver with one vehicle who makes 20 to 30 drop-offs daily can buy into the service from £80.

This is calculated on a £30 licence fee for a single vehicle, plus £50 for a pack of 1,000 credits.

Mucklow said: “Credits are used every time you optimise a route. So if you have five vehicles and are optimising 40 deliveries each day, you need 50 credits – 10 credits for the start and end points for the vehicles, plus 40 credits for the delivery addresses that you want to optimise.

“The main differentiators for Route Optimiser are price and accessibility – the service costs considerably less (a few pounds rather than the traditional £50,000 or more) than others in the marketplace and can be accessed as a web service. 

“In addition, there are no set-up fees or minimum term contracts – you simply pay as you go.”