When spreadsheets stop working
Most small fleets start on a spreadsheet, a group chat and a folder of PDFs. It works until one of these starts happening every week:
- The same load is typed two or three times: into the sheet, the invoice and the driver's pay.
- Nobody can say at a glance which trucks are free tomorrow.
- Invoices go out days after delivery because the POD is somewhere in a text thread.
- Driver pay takes an afternoon and still has mistakes.
- You cannot tell which loads, lanes or trucks actually made money.
What it should do
- Turn a rate confirmation into a load without retyping it.
- A dispatch board: every driver and every load for the week, assigned by dragging.
- A driver app that gets the load, the stops and the documents to the driver and gets the POD back.
- Tracking from the driver's phone or your ELD, with ETAs and updates for the broker.
- Invoices made from the load, emailed to the broker or sent to your factoring company.
- Driver pay worked out from each driver's own pay rate. See driver pay.
- Profit per load, truck, driver and lane, plus the IFTA numbers each quarter. See IFTA explained.
Questions to ask before you sign up
- How is it priced: per truck, per user or a flat fee? Do office seats cost extra?
- Is there a contract, a setup fee or a minimum term? Can you cancel online?
- Can you import your drivers, trucks, customers and loads, and export everything if you leave?
- Which phones does the driver app run on?
- Does it connect to your ELD?
- Who can see your data, and is it used to train AI?
Ask for a demo on sample data that looks like your fleet, not a slide deck.