Streamlining freight travel
Permit Book
In the trucking industry, staying safe and legal on the road is a top priority. Accomplishing this requires managers and drivers to be vigilant when it comes to carrying proper permits and documentation. At any given time, a driver, truck and trailer could need a cumbersome amount of required compliance data in order to be fully prepared.
Dave and Brian Gray, the father and son of Glostone Trucking Solutions, knew this challenge all too well. As a company that manages state and federal compliance documentation for long haul truck owner-operators and nation-wide fleets, Dave and Brian were interested in developing a solution that would streamline their compliance documentation accumulation and handoff processes, allowing drivers to immediately begin their trip with all required documentation. With various categories of required compliance data – medical cards, truck registrations, trailer registrations, maintenance records, state permits, federal permits – and an immense volume of documentation all tailored to each company, driver, truck and trailer, the size and scope of the Permit Book project was considerable.
We provided the full line up of our services for the Permit Book project, including: Product Research, Product Strategy, UX Design, Custom Website Development, Mobile App Development, and Software Support. In an initial research workshop with the Glostone team, Singlemind first looked to define Glostone’s current processes, which involved their account managers gathering the applicable compliance documentation per company, driver, truck, and trailer. Then, they print all the documents, and place them in a physical binder — which is given to the driver before they begin their trip.
We provided the full line up of our services for the Permit Book project, including: Product Research, Product Strategy, UX Design, Custom Website Development, Mobile App Development, and Software Support. In an initial research workshop with the Glostone team, Singlemind first looked to define Glostone’s current processes, which involved their account managers gathering the applicable compliance documentation per company, driver, truck, and trailer. Then, they print all the documents, and place them in a physical binder — which is given to the driver before they begin their trip.
Singlemind and Glostone improved this process by allowing Glostone’s account managers to easily upload documentation to a website and assign them to the relevant driver, truck, and trailer. Once the files were uploaded, any affected drivers would receive notifications that new files were available for download (through the app).
As many drivers lose cell phone reception during the course of their trips, our team also knew that we needed to develop a solution that could be accessed offline. The solution we came to was an iOS and Android mobile application that could be used without cell coverage.
As many drivers lose cell phone reception during the course of their trips, our team also knew that we needed to develop a solution that could be accessed offline. The solution we came to was an iOS and Android mobile application that could be used without cell coverage.
We built the Permit Book website to function as the app’s backend document management system. The Glostone team can manage (new and existing) users and documents, making the process seamless for drivers anywhere.
To keep things as standardized as possible, we used React Native to build the Permit Book mobile app. This was an obvious choice, due to its support for cross-platform mobile builds (including Android and iOS) and the opportunity to maintain a single code language between systems. The website was built with Vue JS (similar to React, but syntactically different).
In under seven months, the new Permit Book website and apps were launched — and are currently in use today.
Singlemind continues to work with Glostone to automate, add additional features, and streamline long-haul trucking processes well into the future.
