Osprey Freight plans 4,000 routes a night on one platform

The challenge

Osprey runs an overnight parcel and pallet network from 26 depots with 1,800 vehicles. Planning starts when orders close at 6 p.m. and must be finished before loading begins. Each of the three regions planned its own routes in its own tool, with its own rules for driver hours and vehicle sizes. Cross-region freight was planned last, by hand.

Because the plan took five hours, it was rarely revisited. When something changed after 11 p.m., the planner on duty patched the plan by phone. Empty miles, trucks driving with nothing in them, ran at 17% of the total.

The approach

We started by spending six weeks of nights in Osprey's planning rooms, writing down how each region actually planned, including the rules that existed only in planners' heads. From that we built one data model for orders, vehicles, drivers, depots and delivery windows, shared by all three regions.

On top of it sits a route optimization engine, built on an open-source solver and configured for Osprey's rules: driver hours, dock slots, vehicle sizes and customer time windows. It proposes a plan for the whole network at once, so cross-region freight is planned with everything else, not after it.

“We did not want a black box. The planners can see why the platform chose each route, and they can overrule it. That is why they use it.”

Each region then ran in shadow for six weeks. The new platform planned the same night as the old tool, and planners compared the two each morning. Only when the planners themselves preferred the new plan for two weeks running did the region switch over. The eastern region went first, in March 2025; the last switched in October.

What changed for the planners

• The first complete plan is ready 50 minutes after the order cutoff.
• Depot scanners and vehicle telematics feed the plan, so it updates as the night goes on.
• When a truck breaks down, the platform proposes a new plan for the affected routes in minutes.
• Every route shows why it was chosen, and planners can lock or change any part of it.

The outcome

Since October 2025, all 4,000 nightly routes have been planned on one platform. Empty miles have fallen by 11%, fuel use by 8%, and on-time delivery has risen from 91% to 97%. Planners now finish their shift with a plan they trust, and spend the time they got back on the exceptions that need a person.

50 minFrom order cutoff to a complete plan for the whole network, down from five hours.

Osprey's own platform team, trained alongside ours from the first month, now runs the platform and has since added a fourth planning rule set for a new refrigerated service.