The sequencer is designed to optimise your routes for efficiency and speed. It is designed to get you to your jobs as quickly as possible, and you might notice some specific behaviours in how it orders your jobs, which are the result of deep calculations and adjustments. This section explains some common sequencing behaviours you might encounter, helping you understand why they occur and how they ultimately help your day run smoothly.
Getting sent back down the same road
Your safety is important, and NowGo always tries to avoid unsafe manoeuvres. The sequencer allows for busy roads, and whether or not it is safe for you to cross the road with a delivery. This means that, especially for a highway or other high-traffic road, you might get sent up one way, then turned around and sent back down the other direction. This can feel unintuitive sometimes, but the sequencer always looks for the most efficient solution. You are only sent back down the same road if it is faster than finding a spot to turn around, or if it is the only safe option.
Jumping around different suburbs
When humans try to organise stops, we tend to think in terms of tackling one suburb at a time. When you run the sequencer it looks at all the possible combinations of stops, and comes up with efficient solutions that aren't always obvious, and doing one whole suburb at a time usually takes longer than needed. The sequencer uses the road network as a whole to determine the order of stops, rather than what suburbs the stops happen to land in. This usually means that suburbs don’t get fully completed in one go.
The next stop isn't always the closest
When you run the sequencer it looks at all the possible combinations of stops, and comes up with efficient solutions that aren't always obvious. It often sets snaking paths that loop up through one side of a suburb, then back down the other side. If the next closest stop is on the other side of the road, it can be faster to skip it for now and wait until you drive right past it later. It can often seem intuitive to do the closest stop next, but the bigger picture of all possibilities across the whole shift can save you a lot of time over the course of a day.
Getting bad directions, or missing the entrance
NowGo sends the coordinates for your job to the navigation app that you choose to use, such as Google or Apple Maps, or Waze. Sometimes, the navigation app has
trouble figuring out the best road to send you on based on the set of coordinates.
Drivers are the experts when it comes to all things addresses, and you can help resolve issues when you onboard jobs. When you have information about the job address, or can locate a better address for the entrance, make sure you edit the stop to ensure that you get the best directions available. You can also let your dispatcher know if you have improved directions.
For more information about adjusting addresses, see the fixing addresses article.