What
Start with the data feed, not the interface. A planned route only earns its keep when the position history behind it is dependable, because route sequences, geofence alerts and customer arrival notices all read from that same stream. Ask the vendor to document, in writing, the position update interval, how the platform behaves on the corridors you actually run, and what happens to a vehicle's location history when the signal drops for a stretch of road. A salesperson who cannot answer those three points in a document is giving you a signal about the rest of the relationship. Request a sample route report from an operator in a similar service type, then compare planned arrival against recorded arrival across a full week. Small, steady differences are normal and manageable. Differences that cluster on specific corridors are a coverage or feed problem, and no amount of stop sequencing will repair it.Next, map your own dead zones before you believe any coverage claim. Take your highest-risk routes, ideally the ones where a late arrival triggers a penalty or a customer complaint, and drive them or review historical tracking on them. Note where position gaps appear and how long they last. Then ask a simple question: if a vehicle disappears for that window, does the arrival timestamp still fall inside the promised service window? This is where fleet telematics and route optimization part company, and they deserve separate questions. A platform can build a clean sequence of stops yet show a stale vehicle position, which is why real-time vehicle tracking should be examined as its own capability rather than bundled into a planning demo. Treat the answer as evidence, not reassurance.Clocks matter more than most buyers expect. Ask how the vehicle units and the route planning servers stay aligned in time, and what the platform does when a device clock drifts. An arrival stamp is only as good as the time reference that produced it, and drift on a mixed fleet can quietly push timestamps outside tolerance without anyone touching the route itself. While you are on hardware, ask whether different device generations or firmware versions on your fleet can behave differently, and how the vendor watches for that over months rather than days. Mixed fleets rarely refresh in one go, so divergence between older and newer units is a realistic thing to plan for.Run a paid proof of concept on your real corridors, with written acceptance criteria agreed before it begins. Useful criteria include how often planned arrival matches recorded arrival within your tolerance, how many stops per day show a position gap longer than your service window allows, and whether a driver detour reaches the customer notification without manual intervention. Decide in advance who signs off and what result ends the exercise early. Ask how driver-recorded service times are used to reconcile arrival when tracking drops, and whether that reconciliation flows into customer messages automatically. If your portal, payroll and compliance reporting all draw on the same route feed, test that shared dependency too, because one delayed feed reaches all three at once.Then move to contract terms. Confirm whether location accuracy on your named corridors is a committed service level or a best-effort statement, and get the wording into the agreement rather than an email. Ask what is measured, how it is measured, what counts as a failure, and what remedy follows. Settle exit terms alongside entry terms: export format, retention period, and how quickly your route and location history leaves the platform. If route and location history cannot be exported in a usable format, your leverage at renewal drops, so fix that before the first invoice. None of this guarantees perfect arrival times, and no honest vendor will promise that. The goal is narrower and more useful: know before you sign how planned routes and live positions will behave together on your roads, with your hardware, in your coverage conditions.