Logistics software that can prove what happened
Your dispatch board looks right. Then a customer disputes a delivery from nine days ago, and the only evidence is a driver's memory and a photo nobody can find.
What carriers and 3PLs are actually buying
5 things that decide this
- 01Logistics software is bought to settle arguments. The dispute with a customer, the claim from a shipper, the driver hour that payroll and the timesheet disagree on.
- 02A driver's phone is the weakest link in your data. It loses signal in a loading bay and a basement, so capture has to survive with no connection and remember the real time.
- 03Dispatch is a permission problem before it is a routing problem. The wrong question is who is free. The right one is who is cleared to drive that vehicle today.
- 04Your TMS or WMS stays the system of record. New software should sit around it and handle the operational work it was never built for.
- 05The proof you need in a claim is boring: a timestamp, a location, a signature and a photo, all tied to one job and none of them editable afterwards.
Everything works until someone disputes it
Most logistics builds are sold on visibility. A live map, a tidy dashboard, a status per load. All useful, and none of it is the thing that costs you money.
The money goes on the argument nine days later. A pallet is short. A customer says nobody came. A driver claims four hours you have logged as two. Your team then spends a morning in call recordings and WhatsApp trying to reconstruct a Tuesday.
So build the evidence first. Capture the proof at the moment of work, keep it attached to the job, and stop anyone editing it later. Then the dispute takes four minutes and you win most of them.
- 01Store the time work happened and the time it synced as two separate fields.
- 02A correction is a new record. Overwriting the original is how evidence stops being evidence.
- 03Attach the photo to the stop, not to a folder someone has to search.
- AssignCleared to drive it, not merely free.
- DepartVehicle, driver and time, recorded once.
- CaptureOffline. Photo, signature, GPS.
- ExceptionShort, refused, damaged, nobody home.
- SettleThe invoice matches the captured job.
Steps one and two are what a demo shows you. Step three is the one that decides whether you can defend a claim in November.
What we build for fleet operations
Field capture with no signal
TankAware captures inspections across petroleum sites on React Native, built for places where the connection drops for days. Sutherland Excavating reported 40% fewer manual errors and 30% higher inspection accuracy after it went in.
Eligibility-gated scheduling
Shift Link checks documents, expiry dates and right-to-work before a shift is offered, so an uncleared worker never appears as an option. The same pattern covers a licence, a medical or a vehicle certification.
One process across every depot
WAIQ turns a written procedure into a step-by-step workflow with version control and training quizzes, then shows leaders task completion by site. Built on React, Tailwind and PostgreSQL.
Telemetry from hundreds of sites
IoT pipelines with predictive alerts on AWS, shipped on TankAware. The hard part is telling a sensor that has gone quiet apart from a sensor reporting zero.
A clock-in from a dead zone looks like fraud
A driver starts at 06:10 in an underground bay. The phone has no signal, so the record uploads at 09:40 when the van reaches the motorway. Your system stamps it 09:40.
Now payroll shows three and a half hours that never existed, and an honest driver looks like a thief. Do that twice and your crews stop using the app. They go back to paper, which is exactly the state you paid to leave.
The fix is a schema decision, not a feature. Keep the event time and the sync time apart from day one. Shift Link pairs GPS with facial recognition at clock-in for the same reason. A good record answers who and where, not only when.
- Queue the whole job offline, not a read-only copy of it.
- Trust the device clock as little as you trust the driver's memory. Record both times and reconcile.
- If a crew can complete a stop faster on paper, they will.
Systems built for work that happens away from a desk
“TankAware has revolutionized how we manage petroleum sites. The real-time data and automation have exceeded expectations.”
Blake Sutherland · President, Sutherland Excavating Ltd.
The usual fleet build against ours
| Criterion | The usual approach | How we build it |
|---|---|---|
| Driver app offline | Read-only cache. The driver can see the stop but cannot complete it. | The full job runs offline and queues. Nothing waits for a bar of signal. |
| Timestamps | One field, written on upload. | Event time and sync time kept apart, so a dead-zone start is not a late entry. |
| Who gets dispatched | Whoever is free. Compliance is checked afterwards, by a person. | Eligibility gates the offer. An expired licence removes the driver from the list. |
| Proof of delivery | A photo in a shared drive, loosely linked to a job number. | Photo, GPS and signature bound to the stop, with corrections added rather than overwritten. |
| Your existing TMS | Replaced, over eighteen months, at enormous risk. | Left alone. It stays the record and wins any conflict about a number. |
The stack behind these builds
Built with
Field and fleet work
Integrations we have shipped
Questions carriers and 3PLs ask first
01What proof do we need to win a delivery dispute?
Four things tied to one stop: the time, the location, a signature or photo, and the identity of whoever captured it. Each has to be recorded at the moment of work and locked afterwards. A photo sitting in a shared drive next to a job number is not evidence, because nobody can show it was not added later.
02Can a driver app work in a loading bay with no signal?
Yes, and it must hold the whole job rather than a read-only copy. The driver completes the stop, takes the photo and captures the signature, and the record queues until there is a connection. TankAware does this across petroleum sites where the link drops for days at a time.
03How do you stop an uncleared driver being dispatched?
Make clearance a condition of the assignment instead of an audit afterwards. Shift Link validates documents, tracks expiry dates and checks right to work before a shift is even offered, which cut manual compliance verification by 70%. The same gate works for a vehicle category, a medical or a site induction.
04Do you replace our transport management system?
No, and you should be wary of anyone who offers to. Your TMS stays the system of record and wins any argument about a number, while the new software handles the operational layer around it. That keeps the project scoped to a problem instead of turning into a migration you never asked for.
05Have you built for a haulier or a 3PL before?
No. None of our 22 published case studies is a carrier, a 3PL or a freight forwarder. We would rather say that now than in week six. What we have shipped is the underlying problem: offline capture, eligibility-gated scheduling and telemetry across hundreds of remote sites.
06Our drivers ignored the last app we bought. Why would this be different?
Because the last one probably cost them time. If completing a stop on the app takes longer than a scribble on a docket, drivers use the docket and your data disappears. So we time the real task on the real device first. Then we cut every field that exists only to make a report look complete.
07What does a first piece of work with you look like?
Scoping calls cost nothing, so start there and bring one painful workflow. Pick the argument that costs you the most: a delivery nobody can prove, a yard where the paperwork arrives three days late, or a handoff between two systems that never agree. If answering it means going inside your existing codebase, we run a paid two-week diagnostic that ends in a fixed price.
