Basic dispatcher, fleet-wide route balancing, driver app — without enterprise complexity or per-seat pricing.
A 2–10 van fleet is the awkward middle: too big for solo-driver tools, too small for enterprise fleet-management platforms that start at $300+/month and require a sales call. SortDrops Team is purpose-built for this segment — $29.99/month flat, up to 20 drivers, Excel upload, k-means geographic clustering, browser-based driver-link, no per-seat pricing. The same dispatcher screen handles 2 vans and 10.
A 2–10 vehicle fleet typically has one part-time dispatcher (often the owner) and a stop volume of 50–250 per day. That volume is well above what a single driver can plan manually, but well below what justifies a dedicated 9-to-5 dispatcher and an enterprise fleet platform. The dispatcher needs to: import the day's order roster, split across drivers, hand off routes to drivers, watch for problems mid-day, reconcile at end of day. SortDrops Team does exactly this in a single browser screen.
The biggest pain point at this scale is per-seat pricing. A 5-vehicle fleet using Route4Me ($40/driver/month) pays $200/month. The same fleet on Routific ($49/vehicle/month entry) pays $245/month. The same fleet on SortDrops Team pays $29.99/month flat. Over a year that's $2,400+ saved with no functional gap on the route-optimization core.
The second pain point is driver-side software. Most enterprise platforms require driver-app installation and account creation per driver. For a 5-vehicle fleet with mixed driver tenure (some full-time, some on-call), this is operational friction. SortDrops driver-link is a URL — no install, no account, send via WhatsApp.
A typical 5-driver fleet day: dispatcher arrives 07:30, exports the day's order roster from the order-management system as Excel (60–120 stops), uploads to SortDrops dispatch mode, sets driver count to 5. SortDrops geocodes all stops, runs k-means geographic clustering to assign stops to drivers (each driver gets a geographically coherent cluster), and runs TSP optimization within each cluster. The whole batch takes 30–90 seconds.
Dispatcher reviews the proposed splits on a colour-coded map (each driver is a different colour). If a stop is misassigned (e.g., dropped in the wrong cluster because the geocoder pinned a slightly wrong location), drag-and-drop moves it to the correct driver. Once the dispatcher is satisfied, click 'Go Live' and each driver gets a WhatsApp link to their personal route — no app install, just a URL. Drivers start at 08:30.
Mid-day exception management: a driver gets a flat tyre at 11:00. Dispatcher pulls that driver's remaining stops and redistributes across the 4 remaining drivers via drag-and-drop. SortDrops re-optimizes each affected driver's queue and pushes updated routes to the driver-links within 5 seconds. The 4 drivers see the new stops appear; the affected driver waits for a tyre change.
End of day reconciliation: dispatcher reviews the dispatch session — completed stops, failed stops, signatures, photos. Export as CSV for billing. Total dispatch session time: 45 minutes spread across the day, mostly passive monitoring.
K-means geographic clustering is the right algorithm at this scale. The dispatcher specifies driver count, k-means assigns stops to the closest centroid, and the route optimizer runs TSP within each cluster. The result is a fair geographic split where each driver works one zone — easier for drivers, easier to reason about for the dispatcher.
Drag-and-drop on the dispatcher map is the manual override. Clustering is good but not perfect — a stop on the cluster boundary might 'feel' like it belongs to a different driver based on local knowledge the algorithm doesn't have. Drag-and-drop is one click, instant.
Live driver tracking on the Team plan updates GPS positions every 30 seconds via the driver-link (the driver's browser shares location while the link is open). The dispatcher screen shows all drivers on a map with live ETAs to their next stop. This is the same telemetry enterprise platforms charge $200+/month for; on SortDrops it's part of the $29.99 flat rate.
Correct. Team is $29.99/month flat for up to 20 drivers. Whether you have 2 drivers or 18, the cost is the same. We chose flat pricing specifically because the per-seat model is the dominant pain point for the 2–10 vehicle segment.
Upload an .xlsx or .csv with one stop per row. Required column: address. Optional columns: customer name, phone, notes, time window, service time. SortDrops geocodes the addresses and surfaces any failures or low-confidence pins for dispatcher correction before optimization.
No. The driver-link is a URL you share via WhatsApp / SMS / email. The driver opens it in their phone browser and sees their route, can mark stops complete, capture signatures, and report failures. No App Store or Google Play download.
We don't currently sell a higher-tier plan above Team. If you genuinely need 25+ drivers consistently, contact us — we'll either expand your seat count on Team or set up a custom plan. Most fleets we see in this band stay 5–12 drivers; few cross 20.