Free route optimization for waste and recycling collection
No account No cost No sales call Plan a collection route across many pickup stops back to your transfer station or landfill, inside truck capacity.
Nothing to sign up for. Open the tool, download the sample workbook, replace the sample stops with yours, and run it.
Open the route optimizer Download the sample workbookWho this is for
Small & independent haulers
Sequence a day's pickups so the truck fills efficiently instead of crisscrossing the route.
Recycling collection routes
Cap volume or weight per truck before it needs to head to the transfer station.
Commercial dumpster servicing
Respect collection time restrictions at each site, such as a residential noise ordinance.
Portable toilet & roll-off servicing
Sequence a multi-stop service run with a per-truck capacity limit.
What it actually does
This is a vehicle routing problem (VRP) solver — the same class of model commercial routing software runs, using Google OR-Tools and real road drive times from OSRM, not straight-line distances.
| Constraint | What it means for a collection route |
|---|---|
| Time windows | A residential area only allows collection after 7am; a commercial account wants pickup before opening. |
| Vehicle capacity | A truck's volume or weight capacity, set per vehicle — the route respects it and flags what does not fit. |
| Route time limit | Cap how long a collection route runs before the truck must head to the transfer site. |
| Unserved stops | A stop that does not fit within the truck's remaining capacity or the route's time budget is flagged as dropped. |
| Mixed fleet | Different truck sizes on the same route plan, each with its own capacity. |
You get back an Excel file with each driver's stop sequence and arrival times, plus an interactive map of the routes.
What it does not do
Being straight about the limits, so nobody wastes an afternoon:
- It is not live dispatch. It plans a day up front. It does not re-route mid-shift when a request comes in.
- There is no driver app. You hand out the route sheet or paste stops into a phone map yourself.
- No live traffic. Drive times are typical road times, not current conditions.
- Single trip, single depot. It plans one load per vehicle from one starting point — it does not model a vehicle returning to reload mid-route.
- Single load per truck. It plans one truck filling up once and heading to the depot — it does not model a truck emptying at the transfer station mid-route and heading back out for a second load.
- It runs to a time limit, so on very large problems it returns the best route set it found in that window, not a proven optimum.
Your data
The workbook you upload is read in memory and is not saved to the server.
But be aware of what does leave: to get real drive times, the coordinates of your stops are sent to the public OSRM routing service, and the resulting travel-time matrix is cached on the server under a hash of those coordinates. If you paste street addresses instead of coordinates, those addresses are sent to the US Census geocoder and/or OpenStreetMap's Nominatim service.
How to start
1. Get the template
Download the sample workbook. It has four sheets: locations, vehicles, parameters, solution.
2. Put your day in it
The first data row of locations is your transfer station, landfill, or yard. Every row after it is a collection stop, with the volume or weight it contributes and any collection-time restriction.
3. Upload and run
Drop the file on the optimizer and hit run. Results come back as a map plus a workbook you can print or share.
If your Excel columns are named differently: on the locations sheet, rename them to match the sample — those are read by name. On the vehicles sheet, columns are read by position, so keep them in the sample’s exact order.
Why it is free
I am an operations research analyst. I spent twenty years building optimization models inside Excel for manufacturers and airlines, where they stayed locked in spreadsheets nobody else could open. I have been converting them into free web tools one at a time and writing up how each conversion went.
Collection routing is usually sold as part of a full waste-management platform. This is just the routing math, free, for anyone who wants to see what it produces on their own stops.
Questions, or an input format that does not fit? Email mario@kindoflost.com. I read them.
Other routing use cases
Same solver and engine, different worked example — each of these is written for its own setting. Start from whichever is closest to yours.
- Food banks & food rescue — Home-delivery and donor-pickup routing for volunteer drivers.
- Excel Solver alternative — For when Excel Solver or SolverStudio can’t handle the problem size anymore.
- Spreadsheet-in, spreadsheet-out — Upload an Excel file of stops, get back a routed workbook and a map.
- Open-source vehicle routing — What’s actually free — the Google OR-Tools engine behind this and most routing tools.
- Last-mile delivery routing — Parcel and package delivery, per-van capacity and time windows.
- Field service routing — Technician appointment windows, job duration, and per-tech capacity.
- Delivery route planner — For small businesses running their own delivery routes.
- Fleet route optimization — Multi-vehicle trucking and distribution fleets.
- Sales rep route planner — Outside sales reps and merchandisers visiting client sites.
- Courier routing software — Same-day and multi-stop courier services.
Related
- Route optimizer — the tool itself, with the full parameter reference.
- Optimizador de rutas — Spanish version.
- Kind-of-Lost — write-ups of each model, including how this one was built.