Nearly every transport operator we have worked with started the same way. Jobs came in by phone or email and went into a spreadsheet. The coordinator rang the drivers with the details. The drivers rang back when the job was done, or texted a photo of the docket. At the end of the week the spreadsheet was turned into invoices. It worked because the coordinator could hold the whole day in their head.
Then the business grew, and the day stopped fitting.
The signs it is breaking
- The coordinator cannot take leave. The spreadsheet is theirs. The driver numbers are in their phone. The rates are in their head. A week off means a week of chaos.
- Clients ring to ask where their load is. The coordinator rings the driver to find out, then rings the client back. Each job generates three calls that add nothing.
- Invoices go out late and wrong. The docket is a photo in a text message. The weighbridge ticket is in the cab. The rate was agreed on the phone. Friday's invoicing is a reconstruction job.
- Carriers and subcontractors need a second spreadsheet. Their invoices arrive against jobs nobody can match them to, and get paid on trust.
What buys time
A shared spreadsheet rather than a personal one, so the office can see the day without ringing the coordinator. A group chat for each day where drivers post dockets and status, so the photos are in one place rather than scattered across text messages. A written rate card. A rule that no job gets invoiced without a docket. These will carry an operator from five trucks to perhaps ten. They do not take the phone out of the middle of everything.
What the platform changes
Operators who have grown past this run a job and dispatch platform with a driver app. Clients request work through a portal, or the coordinator enters it. Jobs are broken into loads and allocated to drivers or carriers. The driver has the job on their phone before they leave, with access notes, maps and who to call. They take the weighbridge photo and the signature on the phone and mark the job done. The coordinator and the client see the same status without a call. The customer invoice is generated from the completed job and pushed to Xero. Carrier invoices are matched against the loads they carried.
That is what we built for Arrow Logistics, which moves bulk commodities for everyone from single farmers to multinational traders. They came to us on spreadsheets. Today they run a cloud job management platform with full Xero integration and driver apps for iOS and Android that work in rural areas without reception and sync when the truck is back in range.
Most operators do not need the whole platform on day one. The job sheet and the driver app are usually the first pieces, because they take the phone out of dispatch, and invoicing and the client portal follow once the jobs are in a system.
If your dispatch still runs on a spreadsheet and a phone, have a look at what we build for transport and logistics, or tell us how the work moves through your business today.
