6 ms·

Show HN: Onfleet, local delivery logistics SaaS

55 points by calvintennant 11y ago

ryanworl 11y ago
I used this product while it was called Trak. I would highly recommend it to anyone looking to build a service with a delivery component. Their mobile apps work pretty well and drivers need little to no training to use them. The dashboard is very useful when you're at low volumes, and they have a nice API for automating things when the time comes. My only complaint is a driver cannot be "active" on more than one order at once. That is, if a driver is making a delivery to two people from one origin (like a restaurant), only the first customer will receive the tracking link and live updates. The second customer will receive it after the first delivery is complete, but in a densely populated area, there is little value to knowing where your order is when it is already almost to you. That's a pretty small complaint that they'll probably address in the future if it is worthwhile, so I wouldn't let that deter you if you're using a crappy homegrown management system and want something better.
- dvetrano 11y ago
  Hey, Ryan. Thanks for the kind words! David, here, CTO & Co-founder at Onfleet. We're quite busy on a number of improvements touching on some of your points. We released dynamic filtering based on delay time recently which is our first foray into exception-driven dispatching for large volume customers. There's a lot more to come here! While we think of tasks as the smallest atomic unit of work for a driver -- and so we like to imagine that at most one can be active for a given driver at once -- we're rolling out dependencies soon and will be exposing configurable notifications that support these cases. Additionally, the concept you mention around exposing ETAs for future but inactive tasks is in the pipeline. The biggest challenges here are around privacy for the driver and other customers and we'll be sure to put a lot of consideration into balancing visibility and privacy. Often, in the on-demand space, it's common to see companies which expose the driver's location to a customer as they make deliveries to other customers. We do want to allow this feature but it's essential for us that alternatives which better protect customer information are available.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
wehadfun 11y ago
I wasn't able to tell from the website but I'm assuming it uses a phone that your delivery person has for GPS tracking, signature capture,... and feeds the info realtime to a website that operators can watch.
- dvetrano 11y ago
  That's right. Check out our features page for details on the driver apps and the other facets of the product: https://onfleet.com/features https://onfleet.com/features
fiatjaf 11y ago
I thought they were going to do the pickup/delivery for me. Is there a service that does that? Why not?
- ryanworl 11y ago
  The Postmates API could probably help with that ;)
  - dvetrano 11y ago
    The Postmates API is certainly an option for businesses. Often, however, it's quite expensive. Our customers save a significant amount of money by executing deliveries first-party or by delegating to a partner organization. Additionally, we strive to give businesses complete control of their branding and of the recipient experience even while delegating tasks to another organization. For example, we offer a quite customizable recipient tracking page and SMS and voice proxying to hide customer and driver phone numbers. There are more details about these features on the features page (https://onfleet.com/features https://onfleet.com/features) and sprinkled through our API docs but feel free to reach out if you have any questions: http://docs.onfleet.com/ http://docs.onfleet.com/
- dvetrano 11y ago
  Hey, flatjaf. We don't offer first-party delivery but we do allow you to delegate work to "executor" organizations through our connections feature. For example, Meadow uses this feature to assign tasks to their partner dispensaries. Likewise, this can be used to work seamlessly with third-party executors like couriers.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
ispivey 11y ago
Now that's what I call selling pickaxes!
trefn 11y ago
Congrats Mikel and crew!
- euskode 11y ago
  Thanks Tim!
jjgames 11y ago
I wish my local meat delivery folks would use a service like this. Would make it much easier to coordinate with the drivers.
- euskode 11y ago
  Put them in touch with us :) contact@onfleet.com
omg_ketchup 11y ago
Should have gone with "Onfleek". Otherwise, nice.
- calvintennant 11y ago
  You don't think we can hop on the momentum there? "This craft ice cream delivered on-demand to my door is #onfleet". And thanks :)
teh_klev 11y ago
That logo looks similar to the Visual Studio 2010 one: http://imgur.com/9BB0B3w http://imgur.com/9BB0B3w https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=Visual+Studio+2010+Logo&FORM=IRMHRS https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=Visual+Studio+2010+Logo...
slackstation 11y ago
Is your name a play off the slang term "On Fleek"?
- calvintennant 11y ago
  More of a happy accident, I guess. I don't think we realized "on fleek" was a thing until long after we had the domain.
  - slackstation 11y ago
    I sent a request for a demo. Company was listed as To Be Named. Would really like to check you guys out. You can possibly solve a big problem for us.
- brickmort 11y ago
  Now all we need is a company called "Eyebrows" to use this. Then you'll have Eyebrows on Fleet :)
theli0nheart 11y ago
If you're interested in integrating with Onfleet's API, or just want to play around, I wrote a pretty comprehensive wrapper (there are a few things missing, but it's already running in production code). Hope it's helpful! Contributions welcome. :) https://github.com/lionheart/python-onfleet https://github.com/lionheart/python-onfleet
- calvintennant 11y ago
  Thanks for the python wrapper Dan! That was passed around the office a couple weeks ago, we were all quite happy to see it.
  - theli0nheart 11y ago
    You're welcome! That's so cool to hear. If you have any comments or suggestions, let me know.
ianseyer 11y ago
Hard to ascertain - does this service provide automated route recommendations? via some path finding optimization?
- euskode 11y ago
  It will in a few weeks!
  - jeddawson 11y ago
    Are you going to support routing rules like preferring right hand turns? If so, we should talk.
    - euskode 11y ago
      This is something we will eventually support, absolutely, but our first release won't include this as a configurable option. That being said, we plan on making travel restrictions a first-class setting soon after launch. Feel free to email me directly if you wanna chat some more :)
Crewfitter 11y ago
Congrats to Mikel and the team - love the product!

55 points by calvintennant 11y ago

I used this product while it was called Trak. I would highly recommend it to anyone looking to build a service with a delivery component. Their mobile apps work pretty well and drivers need little to no training to use them. The dashboard is very useful when you're at low volumes, and they have a nice API for automating things when the time comes. My only complaint is a driver cannot be "active" on more than one order at once. That is, if a driver is making a delivery to two people from one origin (like a restaurant), only the first customer will receive the tracking link and live updates. The second customer will receive it after the first delivery is complete, but in a densely populated area, there is little value to knowing where your order is when it is already almost to you. That's a pretty small complaint that they'll probably address in the future if it is worthwhile, so I wouldn't let that deter you if you're using a crappy homegrown management system and want something better.

dvetrano 11y ago
Hey, Ryan. Thanks for the kind words! David, here, CTO & Co-founder at Onfleet. We're quite busy on a number of improvements touching on some of your points. We released dynamic filtering based on delay time recently which is our first foray into exception-driven dispatching for large volume customers. There's a lot more to come here! While we think of tasks as the smallest atomic unit of work for a driver -- and so we like to imagine that at most one can be active for a given driver at once -- we're rolling out dependencies soon and will be exposing configurable notifications that support these cases. Additionally, the concept you mention around exposing ETAs for future but inactive tasks is in the pipeline. The biggest challenges here are around privacy for the driver and other customers and we'll be sure to put a lot of consideration into balancing visibility and privacy. Often, in the on-demand space, it's common to see companies which expose the driver's location to a customer as they make deliveries to other customers. We do want to allow this feature but it's essential for us that alternatives which better protect customer information are available.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

wehadfun 11y ago

I wasn't able to tell from the website but I'm assuming it uses a phone that your delivery person has for GPS tracking, signature capture,... and feeds the info realtime to a website that operators can watch.

dvetrano 11y ago
That's right. Check out our features page for details on the driver apps and the other facets of the product: https://onfleet.com/features https://onfleet.com/features

fiatjaf 11y ago

I thought they were going to do the pickup/delivery for me. Is there a service that does that? Why not?

ryanworl 11y ago
The Postmates API could probably help with that ;)
- dvetrano 11y ago
  The Postmates API is certainly an option for businesses. Often, however, it's quite expensive. Our customers save a significant amount of money by executing deliveries first-party or by delegating to a partner organization. Additionally, we strive to give businesses complete control of their branding and of the recipient experience even while delegating tasks to another organization. For example, we offer a quite customizable recipient tracking page and SMS and voice proxying to hide customer and driver phone numbers. There are more details about these features on the features page (https://onfleet.com/features https://onfleet.com/features) and sprinkled through our API docs but feel free to reach out if you have any questions: http://docs.onfleet.com/ http://docs.onfleet.com/
dvetrano 11y ago
Hey, flatjaf. We don't offer first-party delivery but we do allow you to delegate work to "executor" organizations through our connections feature. For example, Meadow uses this feature to assign tasks to their partner dispensaries. Likewise, this can be used to work seamlessly with third-party executors like couriers.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

ispivey 11y ago

Now that's what I call selling pickaxes!

trefn 11y ago

Congrats Mikel and crew!

euskode 11y ago
Thanks Tim!

jjgames 11y ago

I wish my local meat delivery folks would use a service like this. Would make it much easier to coordinate with the drivers.

euskode 11y ago
Put them in touch with us :) contact@onfleet.com

omg_ketchup 11y ago

Should have gone with "Onfleek". Otherwise, nice.

calvintennant 11y ago
You don't think we can hop on the momentum there? "This craft ice cream delivered on-demand to my door is #onfleet". And thanks :)

teh_klev 11y ago

That logo looks similar to the Visual Studio 2010 one: http://imgur.com/9BB0B3w http://imgur.com/9BB0B3w https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=Visual+Studio+2010+Logo&FORM=IRMHRS https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=Visual+Studio+2010+Logo...

slackstation 11y ago

Is your name a play off the slang term "On Fleek"?

calvintennant 11y ago
More of a happy accident, I guess. I don't think we realized "on fleek" was a thing until long after we had the domain.
- slackstation 11y ago
  I sent a request for a demo. Company was listed as To Be Named. Would really like to check you guys out. You can possibly solve a big problem for us.
brickmort 11y ago
Now all we need is a company called "Eyebrows" to use this. Then you'll have Eyebrows on Fleet :)

theli0nheart 11y ago

If you're interested in integrating with Onfleet's API, or just want to play around, I wrote a pretty comprehensive wrapper (there are a few things missing, but it's already running in production code). Hope it's helpful! Contributions welcome. :) https://github.com/lionheart/python-onfleet https://github.com/lionheart/python-onfleet

calvintennant 11y ago
Thanks for the python wrapper Dan! That was passed around the office a couple weeks ago, we were all quite happy to see it.
- theli0nheart 11y ago
  You're welcome! That's so cool to hear. If you have any comments or suggestions, let me know.

ianseyer 11y ago

Hard to ascertain - does this service provide automated route recommendations? via some path finding optimization?

euskode 11y ago
It will in a few weeks!
- jeddawson 11y ago
  Are you going to support routing rules like preferring right hand turns? If so, we should talk.
  - euskode 11y ago
    This is something we will eventually support, absolutely, but our first release won't include this as a configurable option. That being said, we plan on making travel restrictions a first-class setting soon after launch. Feel free to email me directly if you wanna chat some more :)

Crewfitter 11y ago

Congrats to Mikel and the team - love the product!