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For trucking, distribution, 3PL, and freight forwarding businesses whose existing tools weren’t designed for the way the work actually runs. Where the dispatch software was chosen by a customer, the maintenance system went back to paper, and the answer to “which truck is making us money?” still lives in an Excel sheet.
Your biggest customer mandated the platform. You use it because you have to. You don’t really control how it works, and the only way to get the data out is to copy it somewhere else by hand.
You’re paying for the TMS, a maintenance app, fuel cards, payroll, plus the spreadsheets your team actually runs the operation on. None of them talk in any useful way.
You can answer “did the company make money this year?” but you can’t answer “did this route, this driver, this customer actually make money?” The numbers live in three or four systems.
Somebody on your team built a master Excel sheet that holds the operation together. Maintenance schedules, per-customer rates, truck and route tracking. The team trusts the spreadsheet more than the software they pay for.
When the systems are this fragmented, the right move usually isn’t a new ERP. It’s connecting the data you already have so you can finally see what each route, driver, and customer is actually worth.
In about four out of five consultations we run with logistics operators, we recommend against a custom rebuild. The TMS, the maintenance app, the fuel system, the accounting platform — they’re individually fine. The actual problem is between them: data that doesn’t flow, profitability that lives in three different places, and a master Excel sheet that should have been replaced by an integration five years ago.
Jake spent nearly a decade building software inside trucking, distribution, and freight forwarding businesses before starting Pilot West. He understands the operational lingo and can pick up a conversation with your dispatchers, drivers, and operations leads without lag. The developers we put on logistics work do the same. You’re not paying for us to learn your business on the job.
For the businesses where custom is the right move, the deeper service breakdown is on Logistics ERP Software. For integration-first work, see ERP Software Integration.
Their core operations ran on a Visual FoxPro database older than the developers maintaining it. Inventory, orders, warehouse operations. We rebuilt the operational stack on a modern platform designed for distribution work, then migrated the business one feature at a time. The trucks never stopped rolling.
NetSuite and SAP are general-purpose ERPs with logistics modules layered on. They work for many businesses. For others, the logistics module forces you to think the way the system thinks, instead of how logistics actually works in your operation. Custom is the answer when the off-the-shelf platform’s assumptions don’t match your reality.
Yes. Most logistics engagements include integrations with the systems you already run on. We’ve worked with TMS platforms, WMS systems, load boards, EDI, carrier APIs, and 3PL portals. Custom handles what off-the-shelf can’t and integrates with what off-the-shelf does well.
Common situation in dedicated freight and 3PL. The customer mandates the platform, you use it because you have to. The right move usually isn’t replacing it. It’s connecting it to the rest of your stack so the data flows out into your maintenance, fuel, payroll, and reporting tools.
We ship the highest-impact section in four to six weeks. Full system replacement typically takes six to twelve months depending on complexity. The full system runs alongside whatever you have today until your team is ready to flip the switch on each piece.
From day one. Every engagement transfers source code ownership at the start, not at delivery. If you ever decide to bring the work in-house or change vendors, the code goes with you.
A 30-minute call. We listen to how your operation actually runs, where the system fights you, and what your dispatchers and warehouse leads have built workarounds for. If a configured platform or an integration solves it, we’ll tell you. If custom is the right move, we’ll explain why. Either way, you leave with a written summary, free to keep.