HGV Route Planners: Everything You Need to Know in 2025

A 16-foot trailer is routed onto a 14-foot clearance road. The impact stalls traffic for 45 minutes, damages the vehicle, and results in a failed delivery. The cause was a consumer-grade navigation app that ignored vehicle height restrictions. Tools designed for private cars often overlook critical freight constraints such as bridge clearance, axle loads, and restricted access zones. 

Heavy good vehicles (HGV) route planners account for these variables to prevent disruptions and maintain delivery performance. This blog outlines how HGV route planners work, which features support compliance and uptime, and how Locus enables safer, smarter routing for heavy goods vehicles.

What Is an HGV Route Planner?

An HGV route planner is a routing engine built to handle the unique constraints of commercial freight vehicles. It accounts for infrastructure limitations such as bridge heights, road weight limits, axle-based restrictions, prohibited zones, and hazardous material classifications, parameters that standard navigation tools typically exclude.

The planner uses both static and dynamic data inputs. Static inputs include vehicle dimensions, load type, and delivery time windows. Dynamic variables include real-time traffic, weather disruptions, road closures, and regulatory updates. Based on these factors, it generates compliant, optimized routes with accurate ETAs, required rest periods, and turn-by-turn navigation tailored to each vehicle and trip.

In high-volume logistics environments, especially in sectors like retail, FMCG, and e-commerce, these planners integrate with dispatch platforms, fleet tracking systems, and telematics tools. The result is a coordinated routing workflow that ensures every delivery aligns with compliance rules, operational constraints, and customer commitments.

Suggested Read: How Can Route Optimization Reduce Costs And Improve Last-mile Delivery In Southeast Asia

Why HGV Route Planning Matters in 2025

New York City charges heavy trucks a $21.60 congestion toll when entering Manhattan between 5 a.m. and 9 p.m. on weekdays. France enforces weekend travel bans for vehicles over 7.5 tonnes from 10 p.m. Saturday to 10 p.m. Sunday. In Ho Chi Minh City, heavy vehicles that transport goods are barred from urban zones between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. These restrictions vary by region but pose a consistent challenge: routing decisions must align with legal access windows.

A delivery plan that overlooks time-based entry limits or vehicle class restrictions risks penalties, denied access, or forced detours. These breakdowns disrupt not only one route, but potentially every stop that follows.

HGV route planners integrate such rules into route logic. They schedule arrivals during permitted hours, avoid high-cost entry zones, and align delivery sequences with access regulations and driver availability. With every restriction mapped into the system, dispatchers can issue executable routes that minimize risk and maintain compliance across jurisdictions.

Key HGV Route Planner Features for Smarter Deliveries

An effective HGV route planner must account for both the operational complexity of freight movement and the regulatory environment vehicles operate in. The most capable tools are built around a flexible, rule-based engine that allows logistics teams to model real-world constraints directly into routing decisions.

Key HGV route planner features include:

• Height, weight, and axle-based filtering: Ensures vehicles are routed only through roads and bridges that support their specifications.
  
• Time-based zone access rules: Prevents entry into restricted city areas or toll zones during non-permitted hours.
  
• Real-time traffic and incident data: Reroutes vehicles in response to congestion, construction, or weather-related closures.
  
• Stop-level constraints: Applies rules based on delivery window, unloading time, access difficulty, or cargo sensitivity.
  
• Driver duty hour compliance: Aligns routing with regional working hour rules and rest requirements.
  
• Integration-ready architecture: Syncs with dispatch systems, TMS platforms, and fleet telematics to allow continuous data flow between planning and execution.
  
• Route cost forecasting: Estimates tolls, fuel consumption, and time per route to support margin protection.
  

Many of these capabilities are not standalone add-ons but essential components of enterprise-grade logistics platforms. Locus includes these features as part of its core routing intelligence, enabling teams to build legally compliant, cost-efficient, and scalable heavy goods vehicle delivery plans without manual intervention.

Suggested Read: How to Choose Vehicle Routing Software: 8 Key Considerations

Gaps in Existing HGV Routing Tools

Many routing solutions in the market fall short when applied to HGV operations at scale. While some offer basic truck navigation or fixed-route planning, they are often designed for individual drivers or static delivery models.

Lightweight tools rely on pre-set rules and manual inputs. They may flag height restrictions or low-clearance bridges but rarely account for live traffic disruptions, staging constraints, or driver duty windows. These tools operate in isolation from dispatch platforms, making them difficult to scale or adapt to real-time changes.

Others focus on visibility or static optimization without closing the loop between planning and execution. Routing decisions remain disconnected from downstream metrics like SLA adherence, cost per route, or compliance failures.

For high-volume logistics networks, these gaps translate into route deviations, avoidable fines, and reduced vehicle utilization. A more integrated, dynamic approach is required, where routing is part of a coordinated delivery system, not a one-off task.

Locus solves for this exact need by embedding intelligent HGV routing into a broader orchestration platform. The next section explains how.

How Locus Powers Smart Routing for HGV Fleets

A retail fleet prepares to distribute 12-ton loads across 40 locations using box trucks with varying height and axle configurations. Some destinations fall within urban toll zones restricted until after 9 p.m.; others demand offloading before 7 a.m. One segment includes perishable inventory requiring cold-chain compliance, while several drivers are approaching mandatory rest breaks.

**Of course, this is not a real scenario, but it reflects a highly plausible planning environment. We’ve outlined it here to illustrate the kind of routing complexity that Locus is designed to handle at scale.

Locus begins by matching each vehicle to orders using Dispatch Planning. It evaluates access restrictions, vehicle specifications, cargo sensitivities, and time constraints in parallel, not in isolation. Once assignments are made, DispatchIQ clusters stops and sequences each route based on travel time, delivery windows, and regulatory thresholds.

Live traffic, weather, and road closure data feed into the routing engine to support real-time adjustments. If congestion near a city center threatens an early delivery slot, the system reorders, stops or reassigns vehicles without disrupting the rest of the schedule. This updated route flows instantly into the dispatcher’s dashboard and the driver’s mobile interface, maintaining coordination without delay.

Track and Trace captures exact vehicle movements and stop-level performance. That data is passed into the Analytics module, where missed ETAs, idle time, and zone violations are analyzed and fed back into future planning parameters.

Each Locus module works as part of a closed-loop system: planning decisions shape execution, execution informs performance, and performance data refines planning. That feedback cycle allows logistics teams to operate heavy vehicle networks with fewer manual interventions and higher delivery precision.

Common Challenges Without an HGV Route Planner

In the absence of dedicated HGV routing systems, logistics teams face preventable breakdowns in delivery execution. Vehicles are often routed through zones that restrict access by time, weight, or axle configuration, leading to entry refusals, route deviations, or penalty charges. Without integration between HGV route planning, dispatch, and driver tools, updates made in one system fail to propagate downstream, causing mismatched instructions and missed time windows.

These are just a few examples of HGV route planner challenges that operators encounter daily. Reactive rerouting consumes dispatch bandwidth and introduces delays across the schedule. When route plans ignore driver shift constraints or stop-specific unloading durations, fleets are forced to make last-minute adjustments in the field, reducing productivity and increasing error rates.

These issues are not isolated. They reflect systemic gaps in how routing is handled when HGV-specific logic and execution workflows are not aligned. Addressing them requires structured planning practices, interoperable tools, and real-time coordination across the fleet.

Best Practices for Implementing HGV Route Planning

Effective HGV route planning requires disciplined implementation across data, workflows, and decision-making. The following practices help logistics teams align routing logic with on-ground realities and scale operations without compromising compliance or efficiency.

1. Define Constraints Upfront, Don’t Rely on Defaults

Routing logic must start with the vehicle. Capture specifics like trailer height, maximum gross weight, restricted cargo, and zone entry times. Incorporate delivery window buffers and axle limits where applicable. When these constraints are predefined, planners avoid reroutes caused by avoidable violations.

2. Evaluate Gaps Using Route-Level Performance Data

Review every completed route against four key markers: missed windows, toll overages, route deviations, and service exceptions. Look for repeat failures tied to specific locations, stop orders, or road segments. These findings inform which parameters need tightening, such as loading time estimates or access rules.

3. Treat Driver Feedback as a Data Source

Routing blind spots, blocked docks, steep gradients, poorly lit delivery zones, often emerge only during execution. Structure a feedback mechanism that captures input from drivers at the stop level. Use this data to update stop attributes or flag areas that need delivery logic refinement.

4. Make System Interoperability a Requirement

Routing engines that don’t communicate with dispatch tools or telematics platforms create friction downstream. Integrate route plans with systems that manage execution to eliminate duplication and ensure that any mid-route updates reach both dispatcher and driver without lag.

5. Apply Variable Logic Based on Cargo and SLA Class

Routes vary in complexity based on cargo sensitivity, customer priority, and regulatory exposure. Deliveries involving chilled goods, medical supplies, or time-critical retail replenishment need tighter logic and faster re-optimization. Segment routes by delivery risk and assign routing rules accordingly, prioritizing load integrity over uniformity.

Locus supports this level of planning depth by connecting routing, dispatch, and execution tools into a single orchestration system. Adjustments in one module trigger responses across others, allowing logistics teams to plan and deliver with consistency, even under shifting constraints.

Choosing the Right Route Planner for HGV Success

Each routing decision for an HGV shapes downstream outcomes: whether the vehicle can legally enter the delivery zone, arrive within the allowed window, and complete its run without added cost. Without systems that account for axle limits, access restrictions, time-sensitive delivery slots, and vehicle availability, route plans remain incomplete and prone to failure.

Locus solves for these interdependencies by linking planning, dispatch, fulfillment, and execution within a single platform. Route assignments reflect real-world constraints and stay connected to vehicle availability, driver shifts, and on-ground events. As changes occur, whether due to traffic, regulatory updates, or order reallocation, Locus recalculates viable paths that preserve SLA targets and reduce avoidable overhead.

Organizations operating HGV fleets at scale benefit from this coordinated approach. By embedding compliance rules, cargo logic, and fleet-level data into every route decision, Locus helps logistics teams reduce cost-per-mile, limit penalties, and raise on-time performance.

👉 Schedule a demo to see how Locus can support HGV routing across your logistics network.