Personal blog on early retirement, tradelines, and analytics projects. I write about what I learn as I am learning it.
Routific already gives away a real free tier, up to 100 orders a month, full feature set, unlimited drivers and dispatchers, no watered-down trial version. That’s more generous than most routing software, and if you’re small enough to stay under that ceiling, you may not need a routific alternative at all. This is for what happens after: the day you cross 100 orders and the invoice starts attaching a per-order cost.
If you run an operation that never shuts off — a plant floor, a hospital unit, a security desk, a call center — you have probably run into the 2-2-3 schedule, even if nobody handed you a diagram of it. A 2-2-3 schedule is a rotating pattern built around 12-hour shifts that keeps a facility covered 24 hours a day, seven days a week, while still giving each person a predictable rhythm of work and rest. It sounds like a phone extension, but it is really just a promise: you will never work more than three days in a row, and you will get every other weekend off.
That promise is why the pattern has stuck around in so many round-the-clock workplaces. Below I will walk through exactly how the days fall, why the math works out the way it does, and how you can build one for your own team in a couple of minutes.
Rush hour at a quick-service restaurant isn’t one job, it’s four running at once: someone on the register, someone on the line, someone working the drive-thru window, and a shift lead who has to be on the floor the entire time the store is open — not just during the manager’s hours.
Onfleet is one of the few routing and delivery platforms that actually publishes its pricing, which I respect. But the number itself, $599 a month to start, before you’ve routed a single stop, is exactly why people go looking for an onfleet alternative. I build optimization software for a living, and the free tool below solves the same routing math without a monthly minimum.
A hotel front desk never closes, which means someone senior has to be reachable at 3am just as much as at 3pm — even though the person who can actually approve a comp or handle an angry guest at 3am is a different kind of role than the night auditor working the desk. Housekeeping runs on its own tight window, and maintenance mostly doesn’t need covering overnight at all.
