The vehicle left at seven. Where the trip actually is, is a different question.

What is fleet management software?

Fleet management software is the system that keeps track of the vehicles and drivers a business runs and what each is committed to: which vehicles exist and what condition they are in, who is licensed and available to drive them, what each vehicle is assigned to today, and the history of what it has done. Its job is to answer availability and assignment questions without somebody walking to the yard — and in an operation that also delivers, it is the half that makes dispatch possible at all.

What is logistics management software?

Logistics management software owns the movement: turning a delivery requirement into a trip, releasing it to a driver, following it through the stops it has to make, recording the handoff at the destination and closing it with proof. Where fleet software answers what you have available, logistics software answers what is happening to the thing you sent out. For an operator running its own vehicles the two are halves of one working day, which is why they belong in one system rather than two.

Why combine fleet and logistics management in one system?

Because the same record answers both questions. A dispatcher asking "what can go out at two" is asking a fleet question, and thirty seconds later asking "where is the two o'clock" is asking a logistics one — about the same vehicle, the same driver and the same trip. Splitting them across two systems means the availability picture and the movement picture disagree by mid-afternoon. What this is not is a transport management system in the freight sense: booking external carriers is a different job with a different buyer, and this owns your own vehicles and your own drivers.

Can proof of delivery be captured digitally?

Yes, and the useful question is what your business counts as proof rather than what a feature list offers. A recipient name and a timestamp against the trip settles most disputes on its own; a photograph at the door, a signature on a screen, a reference read back or a scan can each be added where the operation genuinely needs them, and different customers can reasonably need different things. What matters is that the proof is attached to the trip rather than sitting in somebody’s phone, and that a trip without it stays visibly open. What it is not is a certified or legally validated signature.

Can courier and last-mile delivery workflows be included?

They are the same record run at higher frequency and shorter distance, so yes. A last-mile run is a trip with more stops, tighter proof requirements and a higher rate of failed handoffs — which means the parts that matter most are the exception states and the retry, not the routing. Where an operation is genuinely courier-first, that shapes what gets built: more attention on the driver’s surface and on what happens when nobody answers the door, and less on long-haul trip planning.

What is the difference between fleet management and auto workshop software?

They hold the same vehicle for opposite reasons. Fleet asks what the vehicle is doing: what it is assigned to, which trip it is on, where that trip has reached. Auto workshop asks what is being done to it: what the inspection found, what work is open, which parts that work needs. They meet at exactly one question — is this vehicle available to assign — and a vehicle held by an open job is a workshop fact that fleet has to respect. Operators with their own garage usually need both, connected at the vehicle rather than merged.

What is the difference between fleet management and field service management?

A technician travelling to a site is not the same thing as a delivery, even though both involve a vehicle. Field service owns the service request, the technician, the schedule and the work done at the customer's premises. Fleet owns the vehicle, the driver, the movement and the handoff. A business doing both often needs both, and the honest split is that the visit belongs to field service while getting there belongs to fleet — merging them produces a system that schedules badly and dispatches worse.

What is the difference between fleet management and warehouse management?

They meet at the loading bay and own opposite sides of it. Warehouse management owns everything inside the building — receiving, put-away, bins, picking and packing — and ends when the goods are loaded. Fleet and logistics begins there: the vehicle, the driver, the trip and everything that happens between the gate and the handoff. A distributor usually needs both, and keeping them separate is why the warehouse can change how it picks without anybody touching how trips are dispatched.

Does fleet software include GPS tracking?

Not by itself, and it is worth being precise about why. This is a trip operating record, not a tracking product: it knows which stops have been confirmed, by whom and when, which is what an operator actually needs to answer for a delivery. Where a GPS or telematics provider is already in place, position data can often be brought in so stops confirm themselves — but what that provider exposes, how often, and on what terms is checked against them first. An operation with no tracking at all still gets a complete trip record, which is the part most spreadsheets cannot do.

Can a fleet system work without live GPS?

Yes, and a large number of operations run exactly that way. A trip advances when somebody confirms a stop — the driver, the receiving site, or the office recording a call — and the record is just as answerable afterwards as one fed by a device. What you lose is the between-stops picture, and what you gain is a system that does not depend on hardware being fitted, charged and working in every vehicle. Where tracking is added later, it fills in the same states rather than replacing them.

Does fleet software include route optimisation?

Not here, and the honest reason is that route optimisation is a specialist discipline with mature products behind it. This system records the stops and the order your operation decides on, and follows the trip against that plan. Where genuine optimisation matters — many drops, tight windows, cost per kilometre — the sensible route is a dedicated tool connected to this record rather than a routing engine rebuilt inside a custom build, and we would say so rather than sell the build.

Can telematics or GPS providers connect to a custom fleet system?

Often, and the first step never changes: find out what the provider will actually expose to a third party, at what frequency and under what commercial terms. That answer differs between two operators using the same device. Where a connection is available, trip states can be filled in from it and the manual confirmation stays as a fallback. Where it is not, the trip record works on confirmed events — which is why the system is designed around those rather than around a feed that may never arrive.

Custom fleet software or off-the-shelf?

Off-the-shelf is the right answer more often than a software company usually admits. If your operation looks like the standard one — assign, dispatch, deliver, confirm — and the providers you use are already supported, a mature fleet or delivery product will be faster to start and cheaper to run. Custom earns its cost when the dispatch workflow is genuinely specific, when existing systems must be kept and connected, when what counts as proof is unusual, or when a standard product would force a change to something that already works. The test is whether you would have to change how you operate in order to use the product.

Does every fleet need custom software?

No. An operator with a handful of vehicles, a regular route and one person who knows where everything is will often do better with an established tool, or occasionally with a well-kept sheet. The picture changes when trips start waiting on decisions nobody sees, when deliveries cannot be evidenced afterwards, when vehicles are assigned to jobs they cannot do, or when several people need the same answer at once. The signal is not the size of the fleet — it is how many phone calls it takes to find out where something is.

What determines the scope of a fleet and logistics project?

Mainly how a trip is structured and how much has to be proved. Point-to-point movements, one depot, a self-contained system and a simple confirmation is a contained build. Multi-stop runs, part loads and returns, per-customer proof requirements, a driver surface used all day on intermittent signal, several hubs sharing vehicle history, and connections to tracking, orders or accounts each add defined work. What rarely determines it is the length of a feature list — most operators need a narrower system built properly around how dispatch actually happens.

Who owns the system and data after a custom fleet build?

You do — the system, the source code and everything in it, including vehicle records, driver records and trip history. There is no licence to keep paying for the software itself, and nothing is withheld that would stop another team working on it later. Hosting, support and further development are separate arrangements you choose, not conditions of keeping what was built.

Can existing trip sheets and spreadsheets be migrated?

The parts worth having, yes. Vehicle lists, driver records, customer or site lists and any trips still open carry across well because they are structured enough to map, and they are what a dispatcher needs to start. Completed trip history depends entirely on how it was kept — a spreadsheet with consistent columns will move, a drawer of handwritten sheets is usually better scanned and archived than retyped. The useful step is to read a real sample and say what will survive rather than promising everything will.

What should a transport or logistics operator digitise first?

Vehicles, drivers and the trip. A clean list of what you run and who can drive it, and every movement opening a trip record that carries its assignment and its stops, is the foundation everything else stands on. Proof, exceptions, tracking and connections all get easier once those are trustworthy — and starting there also gets the system genuinely used by the people dispatching, which decides whether the rest survives.