Let’s talk
Industries › Building Materials & Construction Supply

Route Optimization for Building Materials & Construction Supply

Your routes change every day. Your SKUs range from single fasteners to commercial HVAC units. Standard routing software can’t handle either reality — Wise Systems does.

Wise Systems is a last-mile routing and dispatch platform for building materials and construction supply distributors who need to plan accurate, executable daily routes across thousands of SKUs and mixed fleets.

Let's Talk

Solve these common challenges with Wise Systems

See how the Wise Systems delivery automation platform can help you overcome your greatest challenges and help you make more on time deliveries. Reach out if these problems sound famliar:

Routes vary day-to-day

Extreme SKU variance breaks standard capacity tools

No visibility into actual driver times

Truck compatibility isn’t accounted for

SKU data lives in your ERP, not your routing tool

Automate route planning and streamline delivery execution with powerful, easy-to-use applications that accelerate your fleet’s performance. Give dispatchers visibility and insight with the Dispatcher web application. Give drivers an intuitive delivery driver app that enables end-to-end navigation and coordination with merchandisers, or share key information with the mobile app your drivers already use.

Increase customer satisfaction with real-time insight into deliveries, and automated notifications that reflect your brand voice. 

Simplify data sharing between your systems of record with seamless API integrations.

Who are building materials & construction supply distributors?

Wise Systems serves distributors across the building materials and construction supply chain, including:

  • Distributors delivering across thousands of SKUs — from fasteners and fittings to pipe, lumber, and commercial equipment
  • Regional and national supply houses servicing general contractors, specialty trades, and project sites
  • Mixed-fleet operations running everything from flatbeds to box trucks, with different weight limits and height clearances per vehicle
  • Multi-depot operations routing out of multiple branch locations to serve dense metro and spread-out regional territories
  • Distributors integrating with ERP and WMS systems that hold SKU dimensions, weights, and order data

Enable the best process for planning, reviewing and managing daily routes

The Wise Systems delivery automation platform works seamlessly with your suite of applications to enable an end-to-end process that empowers your teams.

  1. Use automation and simplified visualizations to plan the most efficient daily routes for your entire fleet in one instance.
  2. Send routes to drivers instantly.
  3. Let drivers tweak routes manually or quickly accept automated adjustments.
  4. Say yes to last-minute orders with automated, optimal-driver suggestions or selections.
  5. Give managers the information they need to manage exceptions in real time, including historical and live driver tracking.
  6. Deliver better customer experiences with ETAs and real-time insight into delivery status.

With Wise Systems, wholesale distributors can:

  • Maximize vehicle utilization
  • Decrease time spent planning daily routes
  • Reduce dwell times for drivers 
  • Scale up to meet increasing demand
  • Manage driver availability
  • Quickly onboard teams with easy-to-use user interfaces
  • Easily handle pickups and deliveries
  • Make decisions more quickly with algorithms that work alongside the fleet
  • Enable more informed fleet management with machine learning that improves over time
Automated route planning for retail distribution - Wise Systems

Plan and dispatch routes that account for what’s actually on the truck

Capacitization is what makes or breaks a building materials route. Wise Systems integrates with your data pipelines to pull SKU dimensions, weights, and compatibility directly from your source systems — so route plans reflect actual truck loads, not estimates.

  • Model your network, define depot territories, and right-size your fleet with Strategic Planner
  • Convert daily orders into optimized, capacity-accurate routes across your full fleet with Route Planner — handling the full SKU range from small hardware to multi-ton commercial equipment
  • Monitor every driver from a single screen, adapt to exceptions in real time, and add or reassign stops as the day unfolds with Dispatcher
  • Auto-capture arrival and departure at customer sites with geofenced stops — no manual driver input required, and accurate service time data for every location
Explore Strategic Planner Explore Route Planner Explore Dispatcher

Give drivers the tools to execute complex routes

Building materials routes are operationally dense. Drivers need more than a list of stops.

  • Map and list views with inventory details for each stop, so drivers know what’s coming off and in what order
  • Truck-compatible turn-by-turn navigation — Driver generates vehicle-specific directions based on each truck’s dimensions, weight, and clearance restrictions, avoiding low bridges, narrow streets, and restricted roads
  • Barcode scanning to verify SKUs on pickup and delivery, reducing mis-deliveries and disputes
  • Proof of delivery capture — photos, signatures, and reason codes for exceptions
  • Real-time route updates pushed to the app when dispatchers make in-day changes — no texting, no phone calls

Already have a driver app? Use Wise Systems APIs to power your own driver apps and other apps involved in your operations. 

Best of all? No more texting drivers with last-minute route changes. New stops are automatically added and threaded into their routes, and notifications delivered. 

 

Explore Driver
Wise Systems driver mobile app for retail distribution.
Retail distributors improve the customer experience with Customer Portal from Wise Systems.

Elevate your brand with superior recipient experiences

Giving your delivery recipients visibility into their order ETAs is the hallmark of a well-functioning fleet, and one of the easiest and highest value actions you can take to ensure excellent customer service. 

With Customer Portal from Wise Systems, your delivery recipients receive: 

  • Text or email delivery status notifications with an ETA time window, and
  • The ability to track their package’s arrival via map view in real time. 

You also have customizable triggers to manage who’s notified and at what interval.

 

Explore Customer Portal

Turn fleet data into continuous improvement

Most building materials distributors have never had plan vs. actual data. They know routes are running, but not whether drivers are on time, whether service times match expectations, or where the inefficiencies are concentrated.

Performance Manager surfaces this data in a structured, actionable format:

  • Compare planned vs. actual mileage, travel time, and on-time percentage
  • Drill down by driver, depot, or date range to pinpoint underperformance
  • Track trends over time to coach drivers and improve operational consistency
  • Export raw data for your BI or analytics team

 

Explore Performance Manager
Retail distributors integrate to automate routing, drive fleet utilization, and optimize routes during all stages of delivery.

Built for your ecosystem

Last-mile routing and dispatching solutions must integrate tightly with your broader technology stack. Working seamlessly with your systems of record is a hallmark of the Wise Systems delivery automation platform. It supports every stage of the last-mile delivery process – planning, execution, coordination and communication – with apps for delivery planners, dispatchers, drivers, managers and recipients and shares order, load-building and other data with your ERP, OMS, WMS or other systems

  • Integrate with your ERP, TMS and other backend systems, as well as your ELDs. 
  • Use the entire system or customize a solution to fit your team’s needs. 
  • Use the Driver app from Wise Systems or integrate Wise Systems’ data with your existing applications.
Explore the Engine

Let's talk.

We’d love to learn more about your routing challenges and see where we can help.

Some more info will help us get you in touch with the right people:

Like what you see? Sign up for our newsletter.