Plan a Road Trip by Leg, Not by Map Pin — Free
Road trip days fail at the same point: the fourth leg, when the optimistic first two legs have already eaten the afternoon. Splitting the route into legs with real distances makes the shape of each day obvious — which leg is the long one, where the break belongs, and what the fuel budget actually is at today's prices rather than last summer's.
The proof surface
Free path: the card computes locally in the browser with no key and no account. Where an AI step helps, any free chat assistant works — Google AI Studio's free tier and Groq's free tier were both no-card and rate-limited when this page was reviewed on 2026-09-13 (limits change; check before you rely on them).
Why the flat version breaks
A map shows the whole route and hides the parts that hurt. A distance total tells you the trip is 1,900 miles without telling you that day two is 620 of them. Legs are the unit that matches how you actually drive, rest and pay.
How to build the strip in four passes
A leg ends where you get out of the car: fuel, food, a viewpoint, the bed. If a leg is so long that there is no natural stop, that is the finding — not a formatting problem.
Both numbers come from your vehicle and your driving. Two estimates from memory are the difference between a real fuel budget and a wishful one, and every leg recomputes the moment you change either.
The strip flags the long one. If the day that carries it also carries a booking deadline, move the overnight or split the leg — the card is telling you where the risk is concentrated.
Phone batteries and mountain signal are their own problem. A copied strip gives you the cumulative mileage checkpoints, which is what tells you whether you are running an hour behind by lunchtime.
SAMPLE DATA, NOT A VERIFIED CLAIM: Bristol → Inverness · 806 miles over five legs · longest leg 214 miles · fuel at 0.18 per mile. Replace these values with your own source before you rely on anything.
What breaks first
Measuring from home for every stop
Placing every stop at cumulative distance from the start makes the strip useless, because each leg inherits the whole trip. Distances belong to the previous stop.
Using the manufacturer's fuel figure
The published economy number is measured on a rolling road. Use what you actually paid at your last fill-up, or the fuel budget will be about a fifth too low.
Planning to the minute
No strip survives a closed slip road. The hour estimate is for deciding whether a day is possible, not for promising an arrival to the person who is cooking.
What you pay otherwise
| The usual route | What it leaves out | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Route-planning subscription | Live traffic for a trip you could have planned in ten minutes | a monthly fee for one drive |
| A broken overnight plan | A late arrival and a cancellation charge on the booked stop | the cost of the mis-plan |
| Roadside fuel at motorway prices | Filling at the expensive stop because the cheap one was missed | priced per litre at the services |
| This page + the free route leg strip | Computed in your tab, result on screen before you type anything | $0 |
Try the free route leg strip
A five-stop route is already laid out with cumulative mileage and a fuel total. Change the cost per mile to 0.24 and the whole budget moves.
Open the free route leg strip →Keep the work if you will use it again
Every leg with cumulative distance, hours and fuel, plus the longest-leg warning, with no account.
Every leg, the cumulative mileage and the fuel total stay free. The one-time tier adds the printable strip for the car plus the saved routes behind it.
Boundary: This plans the distances and costs you enter. Traffic, closures and prices change hourly — check the live route and the fuel or charging price before you set off, and never read the strip as a promise of arrival time.