Operations

Route

The ordered list of stops a driver runs in a single trip, with the path between them. Route optimization is the search problem of finding the best one given current constraints.

Where this fits

The day-to-day vocabulary of running deliveries. Routes, waves, drops, manifests, ETAs, SLAs. These are the units operators reason in, and the inputs every downstream model needs.

Related terms

Stop: A single location on a route. Pickup or dropoff. Most last-mile routes are sequenced lists of stops.
Wave: A batch of orders released to dispatch together, usually on a clock (every 5 minutes, every hour). Smooths out demand and lets the dispatcher optimize across orders rather than one at a time.
Job: The dispatch unit. The thing a driver actually executes: pickup A, drop B. One order can produce multiple jobs (split shipment, return, exchange) and one job can serve multiple orders (batched delivery).
Manifest: The driver's load list for a route: what's on the truck, in what order, going where. The source of truth for a tour.
Delivery: The full path from origin to destination. The unit of work the platform exists to coordinate. Made up of one or more jobs, depending on whether the order is split, transferred, or returned along the way.