Port to Door
One system for a furniture importer, from the container at sea to a signed-for delivery at a store’s door: stock priced and sold, deliveries planned and tracked, and every drop-off proven.
Today, without it:
- prices in spreadsheets
- deliveries arranged by phone
- “where is the truck?”
With Port to Door:
- At sea (Container tracked by number)
- Port & customs (Status updated as it moves)
- Priced & sold (Cost, wholesale, margin)
- Route planned (For the size of the truck)
- On the road (Driver app works offline)
- Customer alerted (As the truck gets close)
- At the door (Photos and a signature)
- Invoiced (For each completed stop)
The hard part: Proof of delivery works even with no signal.
The problem
A furniture importer has to follow containers across the ocean, price stock bought from factories, sell it on to retail stores, and get every piece to the right door. When that is coordinated by phone and spreadsheet, margins blur and nobody can see where a delivery actually is.
What it does
- Containers followed from the ship through port and customs
- Cost, wholesale, and customer prices, with the margin on each
- Delivery routes planned for the size of the truck
- Live truck tracking, and customers alerted as it gets close
- Proof of delivery (photos and a signature), even without signal
One system from port to door
Containers are tracked at sea and through customs; stock is priced and reserved; orders become picking lists, routes, and delivery manifests; and each stop closes with proof of delivery and an invoice. Seven roles — admin, operations, warehouse, billing, driver, and portals for business clients and retail customers — each get their own workspace, with permissions checked by a shared server-side helper and by the database rules.
Routing that always has an answer
Stops are ordered with HERE’s truck-aware sequencing, using vehicle profiles from a van to a semi. If HERE is unavailable, planning falls back to Google’s Routes API, and then to a local nearest-neighbour sort, so a route can always be built. ETAs account for live traffic, and the planner learns from the reorderings dispatchers make by hand.
Built for the driver’s phone
- A driver app (a PWA) that queues its work offline and syncs when the signal returns
- GPS sampling that adapts to movement and battery level — every five seconds on the move, less often when idle or low
- Proof of delivery with up to five photos, a signature, and the recipient’s name, captured offline
- Customers alerted by text, email, or push notification as the truck gets close
Architecture
- A React application on Firebase: Auth, Firestore, Storage, Hosting, and Cloud Messaging
- More than 150 Cloud Functions for orders, stock, routing, invoicing, and notifications
- HERE and Google Maps for routing and geocoding; Leaflet and OpenStreetMap for live tracking
- PDF invoices, manifests, and picking lists generated in the app
The diagram on this page is an illustrative system flow, not a screenshot of the product.