Best route optimization APIs for oversized & heavy freight

Kardinal

3 weeks ago

In short

APIs compared in this sector

95%

of heavy & bulky constraints covered by Kardinal, ranked 1st

80%

LogisticsOS, the closest competitor

Among route optimization APIs for heavy & bulky transport, Kardinal dominates this sector ranking by a wide margin. Its only two gaps, both covered solely by Solvice, concern very targeted needs: hourly cost by time of day, a niche requirement, and synchronising two crews on the same difficult installation.

Premium > 70%Kardinal (95%), LogisticsOS (80%), Solvice (78%).

Standard 50–70%Google (70%), HERE (70%), NextBillion AI (68%), GraphHopper (50%).

Basic < 50%Verso (46%), Timefold (45%), Routific (39%), Mapbox (31%).

Transporting bulky and heavy goods (freight brokerage, LTL, pallets, furniture, white goods) imposes constraints that ordinary parcel delivery never faces: crews and equipment matched to the load, ranking vehicles by size or emissions, bulky returns to collect in the field, and regional depot networks to optimize without letting a vehicle drive 300 km for a single delivery.

This article compares eleven route optimization APIs (Kardinal, LogisticsOS, Solvice, Google, HERE, NextBillion AI, GraphHopper, Verso, Timefold, Routific, Mapbox) on their ability to handle the specific constraints of heavy and bulky transport.

A sector analysis, drawn from the full benchmark

For a market-wide view across all solutions and all sectors: the main guide to route optimization APIs. The raw data sits in the 2026 benchmark, and the price lists in the pricing comparison.

Key takeaways

In this sector, Kardinal covers 95% of the relevant constraints. LogisticsOS follows (80%), then Solvice (78%), Google and HERE tied (70%), ahead of NextBillion AI (68%).

Kardinal has only two gaps in this sector, both available only from Solvice: hourly cost by time of day, a very niche need, and synchronising two crews on the same installation, one specific use case.

Maximum distance from the depot, useful for optimizing a regional network without sending a crew 300 km for a single delivery, is fully covered only by Kardinal.

Lexicographic optimization, which ranks objectives rather than weighting them, is only available from Kardinal and HERE. The others fall back on a weight for every criterion, which quickly turns into a sprawling setup to fine-tune. Ranking keeps multi-objective optimization simple and readable.

What makes heavy & bulky transport genuinely complex

Crews and equipment matched to each load

Delivering a sofa or a washing machine may require a tail lift, a hand truck, or a two-person crew rather than a lone driver. These configurations change handling time and sometimes the very feasibility of the delivery, without always being mandatory: the optimizer should favour them when available, without turning them into a rigid rule that blocks any delivery in their absence.

More rarely, some especially difficult installations, such as a bulky item on an upper floor with no lift or very heavy equipment, require two crews on site at the same time, with a shared slot to align across two different routes.

Ranking vehicle categories

Some narrow or busy streets call for avoiding wide vehicles in favour of more standard ones, and some shippers want to prioritise electric or low-emission vans ahead of combustion vehicles. These are priorities to combine, not simple exclusion rules: the lower-priority category steps in only when the preferred one cannot absorb the load.

Scheduled appointments

Complex bulky deliveries are almost always made by appointment, which makes that the primary service commitment. Minimising lateness against the agreed slot outweighs most other objectives.

Bulky returns

Furniture and white-goods returns often have to be collected in the field and carried to a drop-off point different from the route's start. A common rule is to start collecting only once a certain volume of deliveries has been made, without excessive rigidity: it still makes sense to pick up a return at the very address where a delivery takes place.

Regional depot networks

With several depots across a territory, the point is to let the optimizer spread the load between sites while keeping each route anchored near its home base, rather than sending a crew far away to rescue an overloaded site and return empty.

The critical constraints for a heavy & bulky transport API

Three levels of requirement structure the market: the classic baseline everyone covers, the intermediate constraints that are indispensable in practice, and the advanced constraints that genuinely make the difference on bulky freight.

Classic

Minimising lateness against agreed appointments

The primary service commitment in this sector.

Covered by: Kardinal, Routific, Timefold, NextBillion AI, Solvice, Google, HERE and LogisticsOS. Absent at GraphHopper, Mapbox and Verso.

Classic

Pickup and delivery within the route

Essential for collecting bulky returns in the field.

Covered by: Every vendor.

Classic

Workload balancing across crews

Spreading the load fairly between crews.

Covered by: Kardinal, Routific, NextBillion AI, Solvice, GraphHopper and LogisticsOS. Absent at Timefold, Google, HERE, Mapbox and Verso.

Intermediate

Ranking vehicle categories by size and emissions

Avoiding wide vehicles in narrow streets, or prioritising clean vehicles.

Covered by: Kardinal and Solvice. Partial at NextBillion AI, Google, HERE, Verso and LogisticsOS.

Intermediate

Preferred crew or vehicle for heavy deliveries

Favouring a tail lift or a two-person crew without mandating it.

Covered by: Kardinal, Timefold, Solvice, GraphHopper, HERE and LogisticsOS.

Intermediate

Service time dependent on equipment and crew

Adapting handling time to the tail lift or the number of people assigned.

Covered by: Kardinal, Solvice, Google, HERE, Verso and LogisticsOS.

Intermediate

Maximum route distance

Keeping the route within an electric vehicle's range.

Covered by: Every vendor except Routific, Timefold and Mapbox.

Intermediate

Several trips a day

Returning to reload when volume limits how many items fit.

Covered by: Every vendor except Routific and Timefold.

Advanced

Maximum distance from the depot

Capping how far a route strays from its home depot across a regional network.

Covered by: Kardinal only. Partial at NextBillion AI, Solvice and LogisticsOS.

Advanced

Lexicographic optimization

First meeting the appointments, then minimising costs, with no weights to calibrate between the two.

Covered by: Kardinal and HERE only.

Advanced

Time-of-day-dependent hourly cost

Modelling a premium on defined slots. A niche need, rare in the sector's rate structures.

Covered by: Solvice only.

Advanced

Conditional pickup of bulky returns

Starting collection only once the route is far enough along, without excessive rigidity.

Covered by: Kardinal and Solvice only.

Advanced

Synchronising two crews on one installation

Aligning a shared slot across two routes for a two-crew delivery.

Covered by: Solvice only, ahead of Kardinal on this one.

The heavy & bulky transport APIs compared

Kardinal

95% coverage · 1st/11

The most complete API on heavy and bulky freight

Kardinal is the most complete solution for heavy and bulky transport. It is the only vendor to fully cover maximum distance from the depot, a key point for regional networks, and it shares with Solvice the exclusive on conditional pickup of bulky returns.

Its only two gaps in this sector, both available only from Solvice: hourly cost by time of day, a very niche need, and synchronising two crews on the same installation, one specific use case.

Ideal for

Bulky-freight carriers of every size, from regional fleets working on appointments to multi-depot networks: freight brokerage, LTL and pallets, furniture and white-goods distribution, operations with frequent bulky returns.

LogisticsOS

80% coverage · 2nd/11

Built around cost trade-offs

LogisticsOS comes in second, carried by its cost modelling. It is one of only two solutions, alongside Kardinal, to fully cover flat-rate and overtime thresholds as well as combined invoice optimization between in-house crews and specialist subcontractors.

Ideal for

Operators constantly arbitrating between in-house crews and specialist providers on economic grounds, and who are not afraid of fine-tuning parameters endlessly.

Solvice

78% coverage · 3rd/11

Two exclusives, including crew synchronisation

Solvice stands out with two exclusives: it is the only solution in the panel, Kardinal included, to synchronise two crews on the same difficult installation, and the only one to model hourly cost by time of day, a very niche need that only comes up in rare rate structures. It also joins Kardinal on ranking vehicles by size and emissions, and on conditional return pickups.

Its limit: no lexicographic optimization. With a model that rich, balancing several objectives means setting a weight on each criterion, and the configuration quickly becomes a heavy machine to fine-tune.

Ideal for

Operators where a large share of installations requires two simultaneous crews, and who have the resources to tune weights criterion by criterion.

Google and HERE

70% coverage · 4th/11, tied

One strength each, the same blind spots

Google and HERE finish tied. Google covers CO2 reporting across a heterogeneous fleet and guaranteed minimum revenue per subcontracted resource well. HERE is the only solution besides Kardinal to offer lexicographic optimization.

Neither fully covers maximum distance from the depot, nor two-crew synchronisation.

Ideal for Google

Operations with a strong environmental-reporting requirement on a mixed fleet.

Ideal for HERE

Operators who want to rank their priorities strictly and already run the HERE mapping ecosystem.

NextBillion AI

68% coverage · 6th/11

Solid on routing, behind on crews

NextBillion AI covers predictive traffic, speed profiles and maximum route distance well, but lags on crew and load-matched equipment constraints: no preference for a tail lift or a reinforced crew, no service time dependent on equipment.

Ideal for

High-volume operators with moderate crew-assignment constraints.

GraphHopper, Verso, Timefold, Routific and Mapbox

50% → 31%

Insufficient coverage on professional bulky freight

GraphHopper (50%) covers reinforced-crew preference and maximum route distance, but not vehicle ranking by size or maximum distance from the depot. It remains suited to small volumes.
Verso (46%) and Timefold (45%) lag on most of the sector's fundamentals.
Routific (39%) and Mapbox (31%) are not designed for professional bulky transport.

Summary table

Solution	Coverage	Max distance from depot	Matched crew / equipment	Conditional return pickup	Lexicographic
Kardinal	95%	Full	Full	Full	Full
LogisticsOS	80%	Partial	Full	No	No
Solvice	78%	Partial	Full	Full	No
Google	70%	No	Partial	No	No
HERE	70%	No	Full	No	Full
NextBillion AI	68%	Partial	No	No	No
GraphHopper	50%	No	Full	No	No
Verso	46%	No	No	No	No
Timefold	45%	No	Full	No	No
Routific	39%	No	No	No	No
Mapbox	31%	No	No	No	No

Our verdict

Fleet size is not what should drive the choice. What matters is how much of your operation goes beyond the classic constraints. Start from the five leading solutions on bulky freight, then narrow the list according to your needs.

Starting point · the top 5

Kardinal, LogisticsOS, Solvice, Google and HERE all cover the fundamentals of bulky transport well. Kardinal leads the group by 15 points.

You deliver with matched crews or equipment

Google, which only partially handles the preference for a reinforced crew or tail lift, drops out. Kardinal, LogisticsOS, Solvice and HERE remain.

You run a regional depot network

HERE, which does not cap how far routes stray from their depot, drops out in turn. Kardinal, LogisticsOS and Solvice remain, and only Kardinal covers this point in full, handles conditional bulky returns alongside Solvice, and ranks its objectives without a stack of weights.

And on price

Among the top 5, Kardinal is also the most competitive overall, including for small and mid-size fleets. The details are in our 2026 pricing comparison.

Test it on your own routes

Test Kardinal optimization on your own data, with no commitment.

Start with the free tier → Read the documentation See the full benchmark

FAQ

Which route optimization API should you choose for heavy and bulky transport?

Kardinal is the most complete solution, with 95% sector coverage, and the most competitive on price among the top 5. LogisticsOS (80%) and Solvice (78%) follow, ahead of Google and HERE, tied (70%). If you deliver with matched crews or equipment, the shortlist narrows to Kardinal, LogisticsOS, Solvice and HERE; with a regional depot network on top, to Kardinal, LogisticsOS and Solvice.

How do you handle deliveries that require a tail lift or a two-person crew?

This preference, useful without always being mandatory, lets the optimizer favour reinforced equipment or crew for heavy or complex deliveries when available, without blocking the delivery in its absence. Kardinal, Timefold, Solvice, GraphHopper, HERE and LogisticsOS offer this capability.

How do you optimize routes with furniture or white-goods returns?

Bulky returns have to be collected in the field and carried to a drop-off point distinct from the route's start. A common rule is to start collecting only once a certain volume of deliveries has been made. Kardinal and Solvice are the only two solutions in the panel to cover this constraint.

Can a route optimization API synchronise two crews for a difficult delivery?

Yes, but only one solution offers it today: Solvice. This constraint aligns a shared slot across two different routes, useful for installations that need two crews present at the same time.

How do you optimize a regional multi-depot network for bulky transport?

Maximum distance from the depot caps how far a route strays from its home site, letting the optimizer spread load across several depots without sending a crew 300 km for a single delivery and back. Kardinal is the only solution in the panel to cover it fully; NextBillion AI, Solvice and LogisticsOS cover it only partially.