Choosing an Alternative

• The Data Model

  Does it treat your operation as real things, or round it to a generic delivery problem?

  • Does it model sites as more than points on a map — depots, customers, chargers, and rest stops, each with their own rules?
  • Does it hold driver shifts, legally required breaks, and which drivers are signed off for which vehicles or loads?
  • Does it know your equipment — compartments, tail-lifts, moveable bulkheads — and let a tractor swap trailers within a shift?

• Route Planning

  Does it plan against the operation as it really runs?

  • Does it use journey times that change through the day, or a single average that quietly runs late?
  • Does it weigh every constraint at once, or fix the vehicles first and the sequence second the way a person has to?
  • Does it fit itself to the kind of work you run, or does it need a consultant to turn the dials?

• Loading

  Is loading part of the plan, or an afterthought?

  • Does it check that a load fits and comes off in the right order as part of routing — not in a separate tool or on the bay?
  • Does it handle weight and volume together, multiple compartments, and temperature zones?
  • Does it respect the order deliveries come off, not just whether the goods fit?

• EV and Multi-Fuel

  Can it plan an electric or mixed fleet honestly?

  • Does it work out real range from load, terrain, and weather, or trust a single spec-sheet figure?
  • Can it plan a charging stop inside a round, scheduled around the driver's break?
  • Can it run diesel, electric, and HVO in one plan, each with its own cost and CO₂?

• Strategic and Reporting

  Does it look past tomorrow?

  • Is it the same engine and data for planning scenarios as for daily plans, or separate tools that can disagree?
  • Does it keep a queryable record of every plan you have run?
  • Can it produce cost and CO₂ figures that trace back to real plans rather than estimates?

• "AI"

  What does the word actually mean here?

  • What does the machine learning actually do, and what produces the route?
  • If it plans end to end with a neural network, will they show it run on a real, full-size, constrained operation?

These are the questions Optrak is built to answer yes to — see route planning, integrated loading, and EV and multi-fuel for how — but they are worth asking of anyone, us included.