Did you know people in Los Angeles spend an average of 119 hours a year stuck in traffic? People in that city get to spend more hours not getting paid to be in traffic than they do get paid to be on a two-week vacation. People are getting vaccinated for Covid. Life is slowly getting back to normal. That means more traffic to deal with for food delivery drivers. Heavy traffic hinders you from making the most money for your time as a courier. No matter what platform you deliver food for in the gig economy, be it DoorDash, UberEats, Grubhub, etc., traffic is a waste of time. There’s only a specific window where orders are flying in demand, so you want to avoid being stuck in traffic. The time saved could result in an extra delivery or two. That’s more money in your bank. Here are four slick tips on how to move through traffic faster and make more food deliveries.
Set Waze To Taxi Mode
There’s a reason Uber, Lyft, Caviar, DoorDash, etc., all have integration with Waze. Waze is the go-to navigation app for food delivery gigs. Period.
With Waze, you can change your settings such that your routes become very efficient. One technique is to switch to Taxi mode. In this mode, Waze thinks you’re a taxi driver and will give you the best routes for taxis. It assumes you want to zoom to your destination and will provide the best routes.
- Go to “Settings”
- Select “Vehicle details.”
- Select “Vehicle type.”
- Pick “Taxi”
Start Your Routes In Residentials
Elite food delivery drivers have an established route they repeat each time they go out. They know their hotspots and will work a very systematic and routine route throughout their delivery hours. Your route plan bears a lot of weight on how many deliveries you can execute during your shift.
One way to move through traffic faster to make more deliveries is to plan your route. During the worst traffic hours, you’re mostly hiding in the residential areas delivering for restaurants that aren’t clustered in busy areas with main streets jammed with cars.
Avoid Turning Left
There’s a trick that most professional couriers know, especially the ones working for brands like UPS or FedEx. Sometimes, if you want to make a left turn, and there is traffic, it’s faster to take many rights turns instead.
See graphic below.
Suppose you are the courier in the yellow vehicle. And you need to get to the red pin. And there’s a line of cars blocking your left turn (red dotted line) due to traffic. In some cases, depending on the line of vehicles, it’s better to take a right turn and keep taking right turns until you are headed in the direction you wanted (green dotted line).
Rule of thumb, when there is traffic, take many right turns to make a left turn. This technique is handy during the early dinner hours when there is a lot of rush hour traffic, and we want to move through traffic faster and make more food deliveries.
Hug The Lane Trick
Okay, so this next tip is a prick move. Use it until your conscience feels terrible. LOL.
Suppose you’re (yellow vehicle) going to need to make a left turn to get to a drop-off (red pin in the image below).
And there’s another car that’s trying to turn left on the opposite lane. The car in the opposite lane cannot make the left turn because of ongoing traffic. See situation A below.
What’s the trick? Before it’s your turn to hit the intersection, hug to the middle of the lane as much as possible. See situation B.
This move opens the path for cars behind you to keep flowing through the intersection. They will block the other vehicle from making a left turn. So that car will continue to hold up the cars behind it. It allows you to make your left turn without worrying about oncoming traffic safely.
Just make sure you don’t overdo it and put yourself in a position to get hit by any vehicle making a wide right turn.
Conclusion
Most if not all food delivery platforms serve urban areas where congestion is always a problem. Making food deliveries during rush hours can be a pain. And with people trying back to everyday life, expect more traffic. Four ways to move through traffic faster and make more food deliveries are using taxi mode in Waze and starting your delivery route in the residentials to avoid traffic. To avoid traffic, avoid making a left turn as it puts you in opposition to ongoing traffic. If you must make a left turn, try to hug the lane and create a pathway for yourself. These tips will help you make more deliveries each time you go out.
Good luck out there, and stay safe. Happy delivering!
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