How To Use Mapquest Route Planner For Deliveries

If you run a delivery business, you need to plan delivery routes. Maybe you’ve tried the Google Maps route planner  and you need something that can handle more stops, so you’re considering MapQuest Route Planner to organize your deliveries. It’s a great option, especially if you are only making around 20 deliveries a day. But, how do you get the most out of it? 

That’s what we’ll show you in this article: How to use MapQuest Route Planner to create an efficient delivery schedule with multiple stops.

What you need to know to get started with MapQuest Route Planner

MapQuest has been around for a long time and has a strong track record. Its iOS and Android mobile apps are among the most popular navigation apps, up there with Waze, Google Maps and Apple Maps. The basic mapping app has great features for ordinary drivers and road trippers, like real-time traffic updates and a quick way to find gas stations, grocery stores, and other points of interest. And unlike Google, it doesn’t clutter the map with lots of irrelevant information.  

That said, MapQuest Route Planner (which you can find at mapquest.com/routeplanner or by clicking the ☰ menu on the main page), is so optimized for consumers that it has some severe limitations when it comes to small businesses and delivery routes:

• You can only plan a route for one driver at a time.
• There is a maximum of 26 addresses per route.
• There are no professional features like delivery time windows, customer notifications or scheduled driver breaks.
• The route planner is ad-funded, which can make the workspace very cluttered.
• MapQuest hasn’t really kept up with a lot of advances in route planning, so it can feel very old and out of date.

If you can live with those limitations — let’s go!

💡 If you need more delivery-friendly features, check out Routific — it’s free to try for 7 days, no credit card required!

How to plan a route with MapQuest Route Planner

1. Add addresses

The first step in using the route planner is — no surprise — to add your addresses. There are three ways to do this:

1. Type in addresses manually, line by line. 
2. Copy and paste your addresses from a list you’ve already created somewhere else, like a spreadsheet. 
3. Upload an Excel spreadsheet or CSV file. 

Whatever method you choose, MapQuest will check your addresses against its own database to create the exact geographic coordinates for each stop. If you’re typing in addresses line by line, you’ll see a list of suggestions pop up as you type, just like in Google Maps. If you’re copy/pasting or uploading a file, things can get tricky — there are a lot of Main Streets in the world!  So be sure to prepare your addresses properly using full addresses, including city, zip/postal code and province/state. The more information you can give, the more quickly MapQuest can find the right locations for your route plan. 

If you’re going to be using MapQuest Route Planner often, it’s a good idea to download their Excel or CSV template file so it’s easier to get all the information right the first time. 

2. Choose your route options and create your route

MapQuest Route Planner let you choose how to plan your route. You can:

• Let MapQuest re-order your stops — this is essential if you want to optimize your route.  You can also drag and drop addresses up and down the list.
• Choose whether to optimize your route for the shortest driving time, or the shortest distance. A lot of the time there’s not much difference — but if there are major roadworks going on, for example, it might be quicker to take an alternative route, even if the actual distance is longer. The fastest route is not always the shortest!
• Specify whether this is a one-way route or a round trip.

If you click on “More route settings” you get a bunch of additional options:

• You can change units between miles and kilometers. 
• You can tell MapQuest to avoid routes that might be more expensive or difficult. Some examples of why you might want to use these options are:

• To avoid extra charges for toll roads or ferries.
• If your vehicles are too slow or heavy for a highway.
• If you want to avoid paperwork or delays associated with crossing international borders. 
• Some roads might be closed because of ice or mud in certain seasons.

And that’s it! You have your route. This is one of the quickest ways to see how route optimization works in practice — although Mapquest’s route optimization is not as good as others.

3. Share your route

MapQuest Route Planner will show you step-by-step driving directions on your computer, but that’s not much help for actually driving! You can print the route out, but you (or your delivery drivers) will probably want the route on an iPhone or Android device to help out while driving.

The “Share” button in the route directions offers two options:

• Send the route to a mobile number. We couldn’t actually get this to work. We tried US numbers, international numbers, every way of formatting the numbers we could think of, and we just got an error message saying “Please enter a valid mobile number”. Which means the only real option is:
• Send a link to your route. Mapquest supplies a short URL link which you can easily copy and paste, then send via email or your favorite messaging app.

Unfortunately, this is where the options run out. In our testing, the URL opened the MapQuest Route Planner web page in a mobile browser, not in MapQuest’s own mobile app. That means there is no GPS navigation, no voice navigation, and no turn-by-turn directions shown on the map — just a list of written directions. 

It’s still possible to make this work, with some added effort. The driver could take the optimized list of addresses, then recreate the route in another navigation app like Waze, Google Maps or Apple Maps to get directions. Or, more experienced drivers might be happy to work off printed directions. 

To be honest, we think this is all more effort than it’s worth. Yes, MapQuest Route Planner is free — but when you factor in all the extra time needed to make it work, the real cost might be higher than a paid app. If you’re not convinced, most route optimization and route planning apps nowadays offer a free version for a 7-day or 14-day trial. We definitely recommend trying them out. 

The bottom line: If you’re planning a once-off recreational road trip, MapQuest does a great job. But if you need to plan a delivery route, or any multi-stop route within an urban area, there are much better route planner apps available.

How is MapQuest connected with RoadWarrior?

If you try MapQuest Route Planner for yourself, you may notice a popup advertising the RoadWarrior app. RoadWarrior was an independent route planning app, originally for single drivers only, that expanded to include a “for teams” offering. MapQuest’s parent company acquired RoadWarrior in December 2021. At the time of writing in mid-2023 the two apps still operate completely independently, so it will be interesting to see what happens next.

Mapquest vs Google Maps

Both Mapquest and Google Maps provide adequate route planning tools for a delivery business. They are both user-friendly and offer some of the basic functionality to help you get from Point A to B. But in both cases, their multi-stop route planning functionality is limited. Here are some of the main differences between the two platforms.

There are better route planners than MapQuest

Mapquest Route Planner is good enough for basic route planning needs, and it has the advantage of being free. But if you need a route planner for your business, you can do better. Finding the best route is not just about convenience, it’s about the profitability of your entire business. The more efficient your routes are, the less you will spend on fuel, vehicle maintenance and driver wages. Try Routific’s delivery route planning software for free, or check out our reviews of other apps below.