What is logistics and fleet software?
Logistics and fleet software decides where vehicles go, records where they are, and reports what they did. It covers route planning, dispatch, driver apps, tracking, proof of delivery and the reports that finance and operations read afterwards.
Our engineers have built several of these systems across their careers. We describe them here as capabilities, without client names. Our live delivery platform for Zippee is the one logistics project we can name, and it is covered in the Zippee case study.
Where do fleets lose time and money?
Fleets lose time and money in planning, in waiting and in paperwork. The truck is not the main cost. The poor plan around the truck is.
The recurring problems are specific:
- Planners build routes by hand in a spreadsheet, so a large day takes hours and still has overlaps.
- Two vehicles serve the same area while another area has no cover.
- Dispatch learns a delivery failed only when the driver calls.
- Proof of delivery is a paper slip that finance chases weeks later.
- Fleet reports are exported by hand, so they are late and nobody trusts them.
Software helps most where a person is repeating a decision a computer can make in seconds, and where nobody has time to check the result by hand.
How does route optimisation work for large jobs?
Route optimisation for large jobs works by splitting the area into zones, each sized to what one truck can carry and serve in a day, and then solving each zone on its own. A small problem solves fast and the pieces fit together.
We built this approach for a job with 16,000 stops. Planning went from about 3 hours to about 4 minutes. Planners then spent their time checking exceptions, not drawing routes. The same idea works for parcel rounds, field service visits and scheduled collections. We test it on your real stops before promising a result, because road networks, time windows and vehicle rules change the answer.
What does an employee transport system need?
An employee transport system needs rosters, vehicle allocation, driver assignment and tracking links that riders can open on their phone. The hard part is that shifts change daily and every change touches someone’s commute.
We have built this kind of operation. Rosters come in, the system groups employees by area and shift, allocates vehicles, assigns drivers and sends each rider a link that shows where their vehicle is. The transport desk handles exceptions, such as a late pickup or an absent driver, and does not rebuild the day from scratch.
How does a truckload freight marketplace work?
A truckload freight marketplace lets shippers post loads and lets transport vendors bid for them. The winning vendor’s trip is then tracked by GPS and closed with proof of delivery.
| Stage | What the system does |
|---|---|
| Post | Shipper lists a load with route, weight and date |
| Bid | Approved vendors submit prices |
| Award | Shipper picks a vendor, and the trip is created |
| Track | GPS shows the truck on the route |
| Close | Proof of delivery is captured and the trip is closed |
The value to a shipper is a competitive price and an evidence trail. The value to a vendor is a steady flow of loads. Both sides see the same trip record, which cuts the phone calls about where a truck is.
How does fleet telematics reporting work?
Fleet telematics reporting turns raw GPS and sensor data into reports that a manager can read, such as trips, idling, stops and distance. A good reporting engine also sends them on a schedule.
We have built an engine that produces scheduled exports, so a fleet owner gets the same report in the same format every Monday without asking. This sounds small, but it replaces hours of manual export work and removes arguments about whose numbers are right.
What does Restrologic run in production today?
Restrologic runs the delivery platform for Zippee in production: a Go backend with live rider tracking, automatic geofences, OTPs, photo proof of delivery and a live ops feed, plus a React ops web app and a React Native rider app.
The cloud side uses AWS with Terraform and Ansible, a highly available Postgres cluster with point-in-time backups, and Grafana, Prometheus and Loki for monitoring. That is the base we would use for a fleet system too. Read how it applies to parcels on the delivery and quick commerce page.
How would a logistics project start with us?
A logistics project starts with a week of reading your current process and data. We ask for a sample day of stops or trips, the rules your planners follow, and the reports people complain about.
From that we propose one narrow first release, usually the planning step or the reporting step, because both are easy to compare against your current numbers. If your systems need to talk to each other, we cover that under custom software and integrations. Write to Deepak on the contact page with a description of your fleet and the day that went worst.