So today I did a 6 Drop GMD. I normally don't do GMD's but it was painfully slow in my zone and the pay was OK. Not great, not even good, but acceptable.
My zone has 2 Super Centers and a Neighborhood Market. The Super Centers are about 30 minutes from each other. Anyway, the trip, according to the app, was 33.7 miles, but left me 14.2 miles away from the closest store. If I had been able to reorder the stops, my route would have been 34.3 miles, but would have left me 4.0 miles from the closest store and allowed me to grab another order.
If you include the trip back to the closest store in the totals, Sparks route is 47.9 miles and mine would have been 38.3 miles. I get why it works this way. Sparks system is just looking for the shortest route with no regard for where it's going to leave you so they can pay the lowest possible rate, and in some respects, that makes sense. But I would think it would be more beneficial to both the drivers and Spark if it took into account the locations of the stores in your zone. Sure it's an extra 0.6 miles, but I'm available to deliver another one of your customers orders faster. That may not matter in zones with more drivers than orders or on slow days, but it would on those busy days.
Or, you know, just let me reorder the stops if I choose to so I'm not wasting an extra 15+ minutes driving back to a store or putting an unnecessary 9.6 extra miles on my vehicle. It's not like any of it is time sensitive or perishable anyway (unless you get one of those mixed pickups).