Link pickups and deliveries
Control when pickups happen relative to deliveries in Upper. Use Pickup Settings in a route's Advanced Settings to run pickups before, between, or after deliveries.
When a route mixes pickups and deliveries — same-day courier orders, returns runs, B2B distribution with backhauls — the order matters. Upper lets you control where pickups land in the sequence relative to deliveries, so the optimizer schedules them the way your operation works.
This setting lives in a route's Advanced Settings, under Pickup Settings.
This article uses Upper's default labels — Delivery, Pickup, and the Assign Drivers UI. A workspace configured for service work may show Service and Technician instead. The behavior is the same.
Before you start
- Mark each stop with the right Stop Type — Delivery, Pickup, or None — so Upper knows which stops to sequence. See Specify pickup vs. delivery for a stop.
- Open the route you want to adjust. Pickup Settings is a per-route control inside that route's Advanced Settings.
Choose how pickups sequence
In a route's Advanced Settings → Pickup Settings, you can schedule pickups:
- Before deliveries — the driver collects pickups first, then makes deliveries.
- In between deliveries — pickups are interleaved with deliveries as the optimizer sees fit.
- After deliveries — deliveries first, pickups at the end.
Open the route's Advanced Settings
From the route, open Advanced Settings.
Find Pickup Settings
Locate the Pickup Settings section.
Pick a sequencing option
Choose how you want pickups handled relative to deliveries — for example Adjust Pickups Before Deliveries or Adjust Pickups in Between Deliveries.
Optimize the route
Run optimization. Upper sequences the route honoring your Pickup Settings choice.
Pickup Settings sets the overall pattern for the route. To fine-tune where an individual stop falls, combine it with time windows and priority levels on the specific stops.
Reinforce the order on specific stops
Pickup Settings controls the route-wide pattern. When a particular pickup must happen before a particular delivery, you can add per-stop guidance on top of it:
- Time windows — give the pickup an earlier window than its matching delivery. See Add time windows to stops.
- Priority — raise the pickup's priority so the optimizer sequences it sooner. Upper offers four levels: Crucial, High, Medium (default), and Low. See Assign priority levels to stops.
- Notes — add a note linking the pickup to its delivery (for example, "Pickup for order #4521") so the driver and dispatcher can see the connection. See Add special instructions to a stop.
Troubleshooting
Related
Import tasks from external systems
Pull orders from your own system into Upper as Tasks via the API, then turn the ones you want to deliver today into a new or existing route in a couple of clicks.
Map custom columns during import
Match your spreadsheet columns to Upper's stop fields in the import wizard. Headers auto-map, and Upper remembers your layout for the next import.