How do I calculate cost per delivery stop?

The formula: (labor + vehicle + overhead) / completed stops

Use the same period on every line: one day, one week or one month. A week smooths out the bad days; a day shows which routes are expensive.

• Labor: everyone paid for the time the route took, from leaving the depot to returning and unloading, including paid breaks and overtime, plus employer costs such as payroll taxes, workers’ compensation and benefits. For contractors, use what you pay per day or per stop
• Vehicle: fuel, maintenance and tires scale with miles; insurance, registration, lease or depreciation scale with days. Use a cost per mile times miles driven, plus a fixed cost per vehicle-day
• Overhead: anything that exists because you run routes, such as routing software, drivers’ phones and data plans, a share of depot space, and the share of dispatch or customer-service time spent on routes. Pick one place for dispatcher time and stay consistent
• Completed stops: only stops actually delivered. A failed delivery that goes out again the next day costs you twice, and a stop that was planned and dropped does not belong in the count. Also track the share of stops that failed

A worked example (hypothetical numbers)

These numbers are invented to show the arithmetic. They are not benchmarks, averages or results from any customer: replace every one with your own. One van, one day: driver wages of 9 paid hours at $25 are $225.00; employer costs at 12% of wages are $27.00; fuel and wear for 120 miles at $0.70 are $84.00; fixed vehicle cost is $45.00; overhead per vehicle-day is $40.00. The total is $421.00. With 60 completed stops, cost per stop is $421.00 / 60 = $7.02.

• The same invented van with a plan that lets the same 60 stops be done in 8.5 paid hours and 100 miles: $212.50 wages, $25.50 employer costs, $70.00 fuel and wear, $45.00 fixed and $40.00 overhead are $393.00, or $6.55 per stop
• That shows which lines can move (miles, paid hours and completed stops), not what your own numbers will do. We do not promise a percentage, and you should be wary of anyone who does without seeing your data
• To find your own number, measure two weeks with your current method first, then the same measure with the new one, in the same season and with a similar mix of stops

Where Afi Planner fits

Afi Planner is route planning and delivery management software for local delivery teams, made by Afi Labs. Planning respects time windows, capacity and shifts, which are the rules that decide miles, paid hours and failed stops. Its analytics report on-time rate, ETA accuracy, stops per hour, miles and ratings per team and driver, each compared with the previous period, and export to Excel. A Cost per stop card prices each route at your own cost per hour and cost per mile (set under How routes are planned), using measured hours and GPS miles where the driver app reported them and the plan otherwise, then divides by delivered stops; it shows what failed deliveries cost and lets you type your old cost per stop to compare. Fixed vehicle costs and overhead are not in it unless you build them into those two rates. Driver pay is computed separately from the same routes (hourly plus per mile, overtime, per stop, on planned or GPS-measured time and distance), which gives you the labor line of the formula above. The free trial lasts three months with no credit card, so you can measure your own before and after on real orders.