The most expensive delivery mistake in food distribution happens before the vehicle leaves the depot. It happens when a chilled product is loaded in an ambient compartment. When the first delivery of the day is loaded at the back of the vehicle. When the total weight exceeds the vehicle's axle rating. Route optimisation cannot fix a load that was built wrong. Getting the load right is the prerequisite. --- The Five SKU Constraints That Determine Load Compatibility Constraint Type What It Governs Consequence of Violation Temperature requirement Chilled, ambient, or frozen — which compartment the SKU travels in Quality failure, customer rejection, regulatory non-compliance Weight per unit Contribution to total payload and axle weight Overloaded vehicle — delayed at weigh station or rejected by customer Volume per unit Space occupied in compartment Under-utilised load or physically impossible load plan Stacking limit Maximum layers that can be placed on top of the SKU Crushed or damaged product — credit note and customer complaint Allergen separation Products requiring physical separation from allergen-containing SKUs Cross-contamination — regulatory breach and product recall risk A load plan that treats all SKUs as equivalent — just weight and destination — will violate one or more of these constraints on a typical multi-SKU food delivery operation. The violation may be invisible at the depot and visible only when the customer refuses the delivery. --- Why Mixed-Temperature Loads Are the Highest-Risk Constraint Most food manufacturers operate mixed fleets — vehicles with both chilled and ambient compartments — to maximise delivery efficiency. The risk is in the load planning. A chilled SKU placed in an ambient compartment will arrive outside its required temperature range. The customer will reject it. The manufacturer will issue a credit note and arrange a return. Mixed-temperature load planning requires the system to know the capacity of each temperature zone within each vehicle — not just total vehicle capacity. Chilled SKUs must be allocated only to chilled compartments, and the total chilled orders assigned must not exceed that vehicle's chilled compartment capacity. --- Load Sequencing: The Constraint Most Often Ignored Load sequencing is the order in which products are physically loaded onto the vehicle. It is determined by the delivery sequence and must mirror it in reverse. The last delivery of the day is loaded first — deep in the vehicle. The first delivery is loaded last — near the door. When the driver arrives at the first stop, those products are immediately accessible. Violating load sequence creates two problems. First, the driver must dig through the load to find each delivery — adding 5–15 minutes to every drop. Second, moving heavy stock to access buried deliveries damages products not intended to be moved, generating complaints and credit notes. --- Driver Constraints in Load Planning Vehicle capacity is only one side of the load-matching problem. Driver constraints are the other. A driver with a Light Motor Vehicle licence cannot operate a vehicle above a certain gross vehicle weight. A driver working a morning shift cannot be assigned a route requiring time on the road past their contractual end time. Automated load and route planning integrates driver constraints with vehicle and SKU constraints simultaneously — not just the vehicle capacity ones. --- What Automated Load Matching Delivers Manufacturers who implement automated SKU-to-vehicle load matching see consistent improvements. Delivery rejections from load constraint violations fall 70–80%. The most common rejections — temperature zone violations and overweight loads — are eliminated by design because the system will not produce a load plan that violates these constraints. Vehicle utilisation improves to 88–94% of capacity. Manual load planning consistently leaves 15–25% of capacity unused. Automated matching finds the combination that maximises utilisation across the fleet. Driver overtime falls as load and route plans are designed to fit within shift hours. Routes running 45 minutes over shift consistently finish on time when load sequence and delivery order are properly optimised together.