Multi-drop delivery is a route where one vehicle makes many short stops in sequence – a courier van delivering 40 parcels in a day across a city, or a grocery distribution van serving a dozen shops on the same route. Each stop is brief, and the van is in motion for only short distances between them.
Multi-drop operations have specific telematics needs. A large volume of short events (idling, harsh stops at traffic lights, kerb-side parking) generates a high number of data points that need to be filtered intelligently to separate genuine driving incidents from normal urban operation.
- Dwell time per stop – records how long the vehicle was stopped at each address
- Urban event calibration – harsh event thresholds need to be set higher for city stop-start driving
- Video telematics relevance – high frequency of pedestrian and cyclist proximity makes forward and nearside cameras particularly valuable
- Battery vs hardwired – multi-drop vans always have a power supply; hardwired trackers are standard