Transport management software for dispatch, tracking and proof of delivery
Transport runs on rate per kilometre and a fuel levy, which means the administration between the job and the invoice is where the margin quietly disappears.
What does High10 build for transport?
Transport management software is the dispatch, allocation, tracking, proof of delivery and customer portal system a road transport operator runs on. In Australia it has to work with the Heavy Vehicle National Law administered by the NHVR, chain of responsibility duties and fatigue rules. It suits operators whose jobs are allocated by phone and whose delivery evidence arrives as paper.
Get a fixed written quote- Typical timeline
- 8 to 16 weeks
- What drives cost
- The number of distinct job types, whether the driver app must work fully offline, how your rating and fuel levy rules work.
- Best for
- General freight, line haul, tipper and bulk, last mile, taxi truck and subcontractor fleets
- You own
- The application, the job data, the delivery evidence and the hosting
- Built with
- Offline first driver apps, telematics integrations, accounting connectors
Your handover
What is actually broken in most transport operations
Allocation happens by phone and memory. The dispatcher knows which driver is near Laverton and which one refuses a particular site, and none of that knowledge exists anywhere but in their head, which makes them impossible to replace and impossible to give a day off. Jobs arrive by email, phone and a customer portal the office has to log into separately, then get typed into a run sheet. Changes during the day are broadcast by text message and half of them are missed.
- 01Dispatch board with allocation rules and live job status
- 02Offline-capable driver app with photos, signatures and scanning
- 03Geofenced arrival and departure events with timestamps
- 04Digital proof of delivery retrievable in seconds
- 05Customer portal for bookings, tracking, PODs and invoices
- 06Rate calculation with fuel levies and accessorial charges
- Subcontractor allocation and settlement workflow
- Driver credential and vehicle compliance registers with alerts
- Accounting and telematics integrations with reconciliation reporting
The evidence side is worse
The evidence side is worse. Proof of delivery is a signed docket that travels back in a truck, gets photographed if you are lucky, and is filed somewhere findable if you are luckier. When a customer disputes a delivery three weeks later, the operator either finds the paper or writes off the invoice. Subcontractor settlement takes days because the rates, the fuel levy, the demurrage and the tolls are reconciled by hand. Meanwhile customers ring the office to ask where their freight is, which is a job the operator is doing for free, dozens of times a day, because the information exists in the telematics unit and never reaches the person who wants it.
Chain of responsibility and fatigue rules change what a system may do
The Heavy Vehicle National Law, administered by the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator, applies in every state and territory except Western Australia and the Northern Territory, which run their own regimes. Under chain of responsibility every party who influences transport activity carries a primary duty, and that includes schedulers, consignors, consignees, loading managers and the operator's executives, who have a personal due diligence obligation. The critical point for software is that a schedule is evidence. If your dispatch system creates a run that cannot be completed within legal driving hours and speed limits, the schedule itself demonstrates a breach of duty, and it will be produced by the regulator rather than by you.
Fatigue management is the sharpest edge
Fatigue management is the sharpest edge. Drivers of fatigue regulated heavy vehicles work to standard hours or to accreditation under Basic Fatigue Management or Advanced Fatigue Management, with work and rest recorded in a written work diary or an electronic work diary approved by the NHVR. Mass, dimension and loading requirements, load restraint under the national guide, and speed compliance policies all sit alongside. Operators accredited under the National Heavy Vehicle Accreditation Scheme face regular audits requiring documented evidence. Separately, the Fair Work Commission now has power to set minimum standards for the road transport industry including for owner drivers, so subcontractor arrangements deserve a fresh look rather than an assumption that last decade's contract still holds.
- Scheduling that checks a run against legal driving time before it is allocated
- Driver licence, medical and accreditation currency tracked with expiry alerts
- Pre start and fault reporting captured on the phone and routed to maintenance
- Fatigue records referenced from the approved diary rather than duplicated informally
- Mass and load restraint checks recorded at the point of loading
- Executive reporting that evidences due diligence rather than asserting it
How the engagement runs
How a transport project usually runs
We start in the yard and in the dispatch office, not in a meeting room. Sitting with an allocator through a morning is the fastest way to learn what the system has to do, because every workaround they have invented is a specification.
- 01Stage 1Ride along and sit with the allocator, recording every phone call and text message the system should absorb
- 02Stage 2Trace one job from booking through to payment and list every delay and manual touch
- 03Stage 3Confirm the compliance record you must be able to produce and where each element will be captured
- 04Build the driver app firstOffline, geofenced events, photos and signature in a few taps
- 05Stage 5Build the dispatch board with allocation rules, subcontractor handling and live status
- 06Stage 6Build the customer portal and automate invoicing, fuel levies and subcontractor settlement
- 07Stage 7Roll out depot by depot, fix the irritations in the first fortnight, then measure office call volume
Two decisions on your side that keep the project moving
We then build in stages that pay for themselves individually. Proof of delivery usually goes first, because it stops the invoice disputes almost immediately and it answers the crew adoption question while the rest is still being built.
Choose the right level
Live tracking depends on what your telematics will give you
Everybody wants live tracking and nobody checks first what their in vehicle units can actually expose. The answer sets the design, and it varies enormously between providers and between the plan you are on with the same provider.
What your telematics provides
01
Documented API with frequent position updates
What you can offer customers
Live map, calculated ETAs and arrival notifications
How we build it
Direct integration with ETA modelling and exception alerts
02
Position data on a long polling interval
What you can offer customers
Approximate location and a delivery window rather than a live dot
How we build it
Show a status timeline instead of a map, which is honest and less annoying
03
Reports and file exports only
What you can offer customers
Historical reporting and next day reconciliation
How we build it
Use driver app events for live status and telematics for verification
04
No telematics, or phone based only
What you can offer customers
Status from driver actions at each job stage
How we build it
Make the driver app the source of truth with geofenced auto events
How we work this out during scoping
We assess this in the first fortnight and tell you plainly which row you are in, because it changes what you can promise your customers more than any interface decision does.
What we build for transport operators
The core is a dispatch board that reflects reality. Jobs arrive from email, EDI, a customer portal or an integration, get allocated to a driver or a subcontractor with skills, vehicle type and location taken into account, and update live as the day changes. The driver app handles the rest: job list, navigation handoff, arrival and departure timestamps, photos, signatures, damage notes, container and pallet tracking, and consignment scanning. It has to work offline, because coverage between towns and inside distribution centres is unreliable, and it has to be usable in ten seconds by someone standing in the rain.
The customer facing layer is where operators recover the most time
The customer facing layer is where operators recover the most time. A portal where a client can book a job, see the status of every consignment, download proof of delivery and retrieve invoices removes the majority of phone calls to the office. Behind it we automate the settlement work: rate calculation with fuel levies and accessorials, subcontractor self billing, and export into your accounting system. Technically that is custom software with driver apps, customer portals and integration work across telematics, accounting and customer systems.
When a custom build is the wrong answer
If you run a handful of vehicles on repeat runs for two customers, an established Australian transport management product will do the job faster and cheaper than a build. Those products already handle rating, PODs and integration with common accounting systems. We will point you at that category and offer to implement and connect one rather than quoting something bespoke.
The rest of the answer
Custom is justified when your commercial model is genuinely unusual, when you are stitching several systems together and the integration layer has become the real product, or when you need a customer experience no product offers and that experience is part of how you win contracts. We do not build electronic work diaries or telematics hardware, because both are approval regimes with specialist providers, and we do not claim a system makes you compliant. Warehousing, freight forwarding and third party logistics operators should look at our logistics page, where the customs and dangerous goods questions are covered properly, and reporting heavy operators usually add Power BI dashboards over the job data once it exists.
Everything included
The handover checklist
The practical artefacts your team or your development partner receives when this phase is complete.
- Dispatch board with allocation rules and live job status
- Offline-capable driver app with photos, signatures and scanning
- Geofenced arrival and departure events with timestamps
- Digital proof of delivery retrievable in seconds
- Customer portal for bookings, tracking, PODs and invoices
- Rate calculation with fuel levies and accessorial charges
- Subcontractor allocation and settlement workflow
- Driver credential and vehicle compliance registers with alerts
- Accounting and telematics integrations with reconciliation reporting
Not sure which level you need?
A 45 minute call, no cost, no obligation. You leave with a scope, an honest timeline and a fixed written quote.
Questions buyers usually ask
Frequently asked questions
How long does a transport system take to build?
Expect 8 to 16 weeks to something you can actually use, then staged releases. We ship the driver app and proof of delivery early, often within the first six weeks, because it removes invoice disputes straight away and tests driver adoption while the dispatch and portal work continues. Rating, settlement and customer portals usually land over the following two to three months.
What drives the cost of transport software?
The number of distinct job types, whether the driver app must work fully offline, how your rating and fuel levy rules work, how many systems it integrates with, and whether subcontractor settlement is in scope. Rating complexity is the one that most often surprises operators. We scope in stages and send a fixed written quote per stage so you can sequence by cash flow impact.
Will our drivers actually use it?
Only if it is faster than the paper they use now, which is the design constraint. That means offline first, large touch targets, capture in a few taps, geofenced events that record arrival without anyone pressing anything, and no field that is not genuinely needed. We roll out depot by depot and fix the irritations in the first fortnight. If nobody uses it, that is a design failure rather than a training gap.
Does this make us compliant with chain of responsibility duties?
No system makes you compliant and any supplier who says otherwise is overselling. What it does is make the evidence and the safe path default: schedules checked against legal driving time before allocation, credentials verified before a job is assigned, pre starts and defects recorded, and executive reporting that shows the due diligence steps were actually taken rather than merely documented.
Can it connect to our telematics and accounting systems?
Usually. We integrate with the telematics providers and accounting systems common in Australian transport rather than assuming you will change either. The first question we settle is which system owns each piece of truth, because ambiguity there is what makes integrations fail quietly. We tell you in the first fortnight exactly what your units will and will not expose.
Who owns the data if we stop working with you?
You keep everything. The application code, the job database, the POD image archive and the hosting accounts are registered to your business. POD archives matter for years because disputes and audits surface late, so we design the export path at the start rather than treating it as an afterthought at the end of the relationship.
Related services
Tell us where the day goes
Describe how a job gets allocated this morning and what happens when a customer disputes a delivery. You get a reply the next business day and a fixed quote in writing once we have the detail.