A route planner for one job

The planner started as a Dutch site for people who were sorting delivery addresses by hand every morning. It turned out that problem is not especially Dutch, and versions followed in German, French, Spanish, Italian, Polish, Czech, Danish and British markets. Sort My Stops is the American one.

Each market gets its own address data, its own map bounds, its own routing setup and its own copy, because US addresses need US-specific data and settings. The optimizer, correction workflow and interface are shared across markets.

Turning “121 N LaSalle St, Chicago, IL 60602” into a point on a map is called geocoding. Every planner depends on this step before it can calculate a route.

Complete street addresses are matched first against the US Census Bureau geocoder, the same public dataset that underpins a great deal of American address work. Census results are interpolated along address ranges, which means a house number is placed proportionally along its block rather than surveyed to the doorstep. That is usually close enough for navigation, but it may not be exact to the driveway.

Search suggestions, partial addresses and clicking a point on the map use OpenStreetMap data through Photon. Road geometry and drive times come from routing services built on the same open road network.

Because none of this is perfect, the planner shows you what it matched and lets you correct it. Anything it is unsure about is held back with its candidates on a map, and you can always drop a pin yourself. A planner that silently guesses is worse than one that asks.

It does not dispatch a fleet, split a day across drivers, handle time windows, collect proof of delivery, or route around bridge heights for a Class 8 truck. Those needs require dispatch, delivery-management or truck-routing software.

It also does not require an account. Persistent drafts and recent-route history live in your browser rather than an account database, so clearing browser data removes them. The planner still sends route data through its API and selected geocoding or routing providers when you search or optimize; the privacy page documents that flow.

One email address, read by the people who build it: contact@sortmystops.com.

Reports about a bad address match, an unexpected route or a missing work feature are all useful. For address problems, include what you typed and where you expected the pin.