More stops per hour means more earnings — but only if you're doing them right. Rushing and cutting corners costs you more time (and sometimes money) in corrections, misdeliveries, and disputes. Here's how experienced drivers pick up speed the smart way.
Eliminate Dead Time Between Stops
The biggest time sink in most routes isn't the stops themselves — it's the dead time between them. Thirty seconds hunting for a package in a cluttered van, forty-five seconds finding an apartment unit number you could have looked up while driving, a minute repackaging something that fell over.
The fix: prep every stop mentally before you park. While approaching a delivery, know the package, the door, the access method (stairs? front door? mailroom?), and any special instructions. By the time you park and step out, you should already know exactly what you're doing.
Load Sequence Matters More Than You Think
Loading your van in reverse delivery order — first stop in the back, last stop in the front — sounds obvious, but drivers who skip this step spend time digging through cargo all day. Re-sorting mid-route eats 5–10 minutes of time that adds up across a shift.
Spend an extra 15 minutes at load-out making the sequence clean. You'll recover it twice over during the route.
Cluster Your Stops Visually
Most delivery apps show your route in sequential order, but that order isn't always geographically efficient. When you have some flexibility on sequence, look for tight clusters — three or four stops on the same street, or a cul-de-sac with two houses. Hit those together even if the app has them separated.
Don't go rogue on the whole route, but micro-level clustering within a few-block radius is fair game and saves real miles.
Perfect Your Hand-Off Motion
At the door, your motions should be economy of movement: package from van, scan, photograph or signature, move. Drivers who fumble with phones, drop packages, re-scan repeatedly, or forget photos lose time at every single stop.
Practice until the scan-photo sequence is muscle memory. The scanning step is not negotiable — missing it creates more work later and can affect pay.
JWA Logistics drivers who stay consistent with their load-out process, stop prep, and scanning habits routinely outperform their initial route estimates — and that consistency is what earns the better routes over time.