We run two trucks. Is this the sort of thing that only works for a big fleet?
The opposite, usually. A big fleet already has a back office; a two-truck operation is the owner driving, invoicing and chasing paperwork in the same day. The useful build here is small — capture the document from the cab, read the numbers off it, invoice the day the load closes. That is weeks of work, not months, and it typically pays back in the days it takes off your invoicing.
Race weekend is chaos. Would a system survive it?
Only if it is built for the specific chaos, which is why we would want to look at your figures from last year before writing anything. What tends to work is publishing rules and prices early, taking deposits in advance, and splitting enquiries so a crew asking about trailer parking is not answered like a family asking about lunch. What does not work is a booking system nobody has time to look at on the day.
How do you charge, and when do we find out the number?
You get one figure and a written scope before any building starts, based on a map of your process that you approve. Nothing is billed by the hour and there is no separate discovery fee. For a seasonal business that matters, because you need to know in February what you are committing to before the summer earns it.
Our driver files and delivery records go back years. Do those stay ours?
They stay yours throughout and they leave with you if you go. Load records, signed receipts, driver files, storage agreements — exported in open formats at any point, free, and written into the agreement before you pay a deposit. Records you might have to produce for an auditor are not something a supplier should ever be able to hold over you.
Will a system decide whether a load is billable or a customer is in default?
No. It will tell you a signed receipt never arrived, or that an account is thirty days behind, and put that in front of a person. The decision to invoice, to chase, or to take a step against a customer stays with you, and anything outbound is held by SolaceSentry until somebody releases it. That gate is standard in what we build.
We already use a load board and an accounting package. Are you replacing them?
Not unless one of them is actively broken. The gap in most operations this size is not the tools, it is that nothing joins them — the document, the load, the invoice and the chase all live somewhere different. We build that join and leave the rest alone. If a setting in what you already own would do it, we will tell you and charge you nothing for the answer.
How much of this is really artificial intelligence?
The document reading is, genuinely — pulling a load number and a date off a photograph taken in a cab at dusk is exactly the kind of job it does well. Sorting enquiries by what the person is asking for is too. The occupancy board, the invoice, the schedule: those are plain software, and we build them as plain software because it is cheaper to run and easier to fix.