The rule is simple: the last drop goes on first. The vehicle is unloaded from the doors, so whatever is nearest the doors comes off at the first stop. If the first customer's goods are buried at the front of the vehicle, the driver moves half the load at every stop.
Simple rules are the ones that get broken at 5am. Here is how to make reverse drop order the easy thing to do.
Palletised routes
On a palletised route the pallet builder decides which lines go on which pallet, and the pallets are loaded in reverse order of their drops. Two cases come up all the time.
One customer per pallet. Straightforward: pallets for the later drops go on first.
Several customers on one pallet. Now the order within the pallet matters. Pack the later drop first, so it sits at the bottom, and the earliest drop last, so it is on top and comes off first. This is where people make mistakes, because the natural thing is to pack in delivery order.
Ways to make it hard to get wrong:
- Show the customers in packing order. On the pallet sheet, list the later drop first, with a label like "pack first, bottom" and "pack last, top".
- Separate the customers. A visible divider between each customer, which changes once that customer is finished, stops two orders blurring together.
- Tag every line. Show the customer code and the order code on each item, so a pallet of five lines for two customers can be checked at a glance.
- Keep the progress in view. A progress bar that stays at the top of the screen tells the packer how much is left.
Loose loads
A route that isn't palletised loads straight onto the vehicle. Put every line for the route on a single page, grouped by drop, last drop first. Then let the loader change it: some vehicles load from the side, some have a bulkhead, and some drops are bulky enough to go first whatever the sequence says. A "last drop first / first drop first" switch, and the ability to move one drop up or down, covers the real world.
Count against what was ordered
Put the ordered quantity right beside the quantity being packed, with a one-tap "pack all". When the quantities differ, ask for a reason from a list you control (shortage, damaged, expired, other) and require a note for the reasons that need one. A short quantity discovered at the yard door can be fixed. One discovered at the customer's door cannot.
Photograph the pallet, then sign it off
A photo of each finished pallet is cheap insurance against "it left here complete". A pallet shouldn't be marked complete until every line is counted and the photo is taken, and a route shouldn't be marked loaded until every pallet is complete.
Don't let the van leave half loaded
The last step is the one that is most often missing: the driver should not be able to start the route until the warehouse is done. In Fleetnyx, Start route in the driver app stays locked on a palletised route until every pallet is marked packed, and tells the driver how many are done. When the last pallet is completed, the button unlocks without a refresh.
The warehouse app is built around exactly this flow: pallet sheets with customers in packing order, ordered beside packing quantities, pallet photos, a sign-off for the route and a calendar to look at any day. Pair it with pallet labels and the pallet builder and the whole path from plan to loaded van is in one place.