Route optimization, finding the best route to drive by multiple locations, is beneficial to many people on the road. Every now and then we have an opportunity to help out volunteers that make collections or deliveries for a good cause.

Christmas trees
Josh Swift is one of those volunteers that make a difference in the lives of others. “We have an annual ongoing project to raise money for The Children’s Hospital Charity whereby after Christmas time in January we offer a service to collect and recycle people’s Christmas trees in exchange for a donation to the charity.”

In January 2013 the project collected 200 Christmas trees and since then collections have snowballed; in 2017 they collected over 1,000 trees. “Being a small team of volunteers, we wanted to find the quickest and most efficient way to do this. RouteXL’s service allowed us to find the best routes available by optimizing all the collection data we gave to it”, says Josh.

Savings
When raising money for a charity you want to make your overheads as small as possible so the money can go to the right place. Josh: “Over the collection week our vans covered 1,800 miles across Sheffield, UK and compared to previous years we travelled less miles per tree on average meaning the collections were faster, more fuel efficient and less stressful than before.”

Josh cannot give an accurate figure on how much money using RouteXL has saved them, but estimates it to be in the hundreds of pounds. “But I know for a fact, it made our jobs less difficult, more enjoyable and enabled us to spend more of our time collecting than driving. I look forward to using RouteXL again next year!”

Learn more about the charity, visit www.christmastreecollections.co.uk