Logistics App Development Guide: How to Create an Application for Your Transportation Business

Let’s start by quickly reminding ourselves of the top benefits of creating a logistics mobile app. If you’re familiar with all the advantages of having your own digital logistics system, you can jump right to the part about key features of your future TMS. Enjoy!

👍 Top Benefits of Building a Logistics Mobile App

A mobile-based TMS can improve and simplify a number of activities for both your drivers and managers. Such apps actually can help to manage most logistic processes: warehouse management, transport logistics scheduling, fleet management, supply chain organization, and others.

For instance, it deals with the hassle, paperwork, delays, and other fragmented & time-consuming processes that are now a part of the industry. Modern technologies create brand new possibilities to reduce expenses, increase revenue, and make your business more transparent and controllable. Let’s take a closer look!

📍 Save Time on Vehicle Location Tracking

With a driver mobile app, you can effortlessly track and get the exact location of your vehicles. What’s even cooler — your staff don’t have to do anything, since the data is automatically updated real-time.

Thus, you waste less money, and your employees can access data faster and save time for things that really matter.

🏢 Improve Warehouse Management

However, transport and logistics mobile app development is not only about the delivery process itself. It’s also about warehouse management and streamlining your supply chain processes.

A TMS can help improve the way you manage your vehicle and warehouse inventory and dispatch cargo. Moreover, with AI-based technologies, you’ll be able to optimize existing routes and warehouse space usage so your trucks don’t go half-empty.

🚚 Trucking and Logistics App Development: Driver App

The creation of your own Transportation Management System can be divided into 2 big parts: customized logistics app development for drivers and building an ERP-system (Enterprise Resource Planning) for your managers and administrators.

We’ve already mentioned that one of the top reasons to create a TMS for your transportation business is because it will be perfectly tailored to your needs.

Below are some key features that companies usually want to see in their mobile apps, however, we can add any feature that is not mentioned here but will be useful for you.

Sign Up 🔐

This is a necessary step required to identify your drivers within the system. All the provided information will be available to your managers via an Admin Panel. Also, it may be available to Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning algorithms. It will allow them to analyze it and prepare the best vehicle and order allocation suggestions for your case specifically.

Push Notifications work automatically. Your office staff won’t spend time on setting and sending them to keep the drivers informed on the latest changes.

It’s also possible to set up your own custom logistics Push Notifications via an Admin Panel. What is it? Let’s take a closer look!

🖥 Admin Panel Features for your TMS

Logistics management app creation for drivers goes hand in hand with the development of a special ERP for your administrative and management staff. Usually, it is a Web Application with a set of features for controlling, accounting, managing, and analyzing the performance of your drivers.

Let’s take a closer look.

Sign Up 🔐

Your logistics managers and admins should sign up first. The standard “mobile number + password” sign up option can be used for this purpose.

However, to prevent someone unwanted to enter your transport logistics application, we also recommend implementing extra security layers.

Dashboard 📊

The dashboard is the Home Screen of your TMS’s Panel. From here, you can access all of the essential information and features.

The same system can be applied to calculate the profitability of every contract and vehicle, your average bill per delivery, and other financial information that will help you to improve your overall business strategy.

Another reason why this screen requires your close attention during logistics app development is that it’s used to configure your rates. For instance, you can:

• set up mandatory and optional extra charges for shrink wrapping, waiting time, and so on;
• support specific mark-up pricing that considers different parameters;
• exempt specific accessorial charges from mark-up;
• set different rates based on the size and type of goods for delivery.

Thus, you get direct access to multiple rate options. It makes your revenue planning more controlled and predictable.

Push Notifications 🔔

We’ve already mentioned Push Notifications as one of the key advantages of logistics tracking app development for mobile platforms.

Through the Admin Panel, your managers can set up specific rules to send mobile notifications to your drivers. Push notifications can also be sent to your customers if they’re using your branded mobile application to order transportation, for example.

What logistics app development technologies make it possible to build such an app? Here are a few examples.

⚙️ What Technologies Power Logistics App Development?

Transport and logistics mobile app development may seem like a challenge since it involves many features on different levels. However, modern technologies make it not only possible but also quite fast and easy to implement since you don’t have to build it from scratch.

You may share this list of technologies with your app developers. Thus, they'll be able to deliver the mobile application for you in the fastest and the most cost-effective way.

Let’s see.

Location Tracking 📍

Location tracking is one of the key logistics app development technologies. It helps in several cases:

• Users can see the location of your trucks and the estimated time of arrival.
• You can send help or guide the driver to the nearest police station, service center, or hospital in case of emergency.

How does it work from the tech perspective?

Location tracking usually relies on 2 types of signals: satellite and cellular.

Cellular tracking works best in cities, where cellular network coverage is better. It makes this option not very suitable for logistics companies with long rides. Thus, the data may be temporarily unavailable and transmitted later, when the network is restored.

The RFID tags may also contain their own power source. In this case, they’re called active and can broadcast with a range of up to 100 meters. Otherwise, if they don’t have their own power sources, they can cover the range of 25 meters.

NFC tags are quite different. You’ve probably already used it — this is the technology behind Google Pay and Apple Pay.

So the bad news is that it works only at very close range — about 10 centimeters. However, while RFID works only one way (it sends the info from the tag to the reader), NFC technology can work both ways. It means you can not only read the info from the tag but also update the tag with new or changed information.

Another advantage of NFC tags is that they work instantly. Unlike with QR codes, you don’t have to open a camera or a specific app — just put your smartphone near the tag and it will automatically read the command like open the app or change delivery status.

If you're not sure what option meets your business needs best — ask for advice from your mobile app development team.

💸 How Much Does it Cost to Create a Logistic Management App?

Logistics app development is a complex process that requires the help of professional mobile app developers. We asked our Dev Team to make a rough estimate of costs needed to build a logistics app — the driver’s application and the Admin Panel. Here’s what they’ve come up with:

Yet, these are rough estimates that may not exactly match your project. The cost to develop a logistics app greatly depends on many factors like the set of features, required technologies, an hourly rate of your logistic app development company, etc.

In this article, we used an average hourly rate for developers from Eastern Europe. That’s $45/hour. Yet, if you plan to look for a logistic app development company among agencies from Western Europe or North America, they are likely to charge up to $200/hour for the same work.

If needed, we can provide more detailed costs of logistic app development services. Just reach out to us with details of your project using the button at the end of the article!

💡 Takeaways

As you could see, logistics app development can significantly improve the efficiency of your business. Mobile applications can simplify the work, make it more transparent, automated and, thus, less expensive.

To develop a logistics mobile application, you'll likely need to hire experienced app developers for that purpose. So while looking for a potential partner, try to look for a mobile app development team that has the necessary expertise.

The whole development process consists of 3 steps: