The penetration of smartphones and growth in access to the internet has transformed various startup ideas into successful businesses. Similarly, truck booking app development is growing as an enormous business opportunity for various logistics business owners.
Through truck booking app development, logistics owners can expand their business verticals by offering on-demand trucking facilities with additional features like available capacity, GPS tracking, weight criteria, cost-effective prices, and a lot more to their potential users.
According to recent market research, experts are expecting the truck booking appindustry to elevate to US$ 22170 million with an 11.5% CAGR by 2026. Moreover, factors like rising customer demand, technological advancement, and cost-effective infrastructure are good signs for the future of truck booking app development.
This blog will shed light on how Uber For Trucking App Development can help a logistics business to penetrate a million-dollar market and filter out the extensive expenditures of middlemen – brokers.
A logistics app shares the same business model as Uber’s taxi booking app development company. On-demand trucking apps like Uber work as a marketplace between shippers, drivers, and customers. These apps provide three-way communication between the admin (business owner), the driver, and the shipper (customer).
Let’s look into the following points to understand the working process of a trucking app:
Customer(shipper) login to the application
Customer selects the courier weight and destination
The trucking app automatically connects the user to a relevant driver according to the available loading capacity
The truck driver then confirms the consignment
The truck driver follows the GPS to reach the shipper’s address
Driver loads the courier
The driver delivers the shipment
The application will generate an online invoice and send it to the driver, admin(business owner), and the customer (the shipper)
The application redirects the customer to the payment portal
After completing the payment, the user submits a review and feedback conforming to the service received
How Can You Monetize Your Uber Truck App?
We agree that your app has the features and a robust user experience. However, have you ever thought about how your truck booking app earns money?. In this section, we’ll learn about the monetization models for an Uber-like trucking app.
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Advertising is one of the most common monetisation strategies for every mobile application. Here, companies pay you some amount to run their promotional videos or ads on your app network. However, while implementing this monetisation strategy, one should take care of the user experience as well.
Payment Integration
There are various applications that charge some commission for every successful transaction. Similarly, ask your developers to integrate a payment gateway into the application, it allows your application to charge some amount for every money transfer.
Security & Trust
A mobile app with trustworthy and reliable payment solutions tends to acquire more users. Integrate popular and secured gateways such as Paypal, or other merchant accounts into your application to win over the user’s trust.
Paid Features
A mobile application with usable features that cater to the user’s requirements will always run in demand and if those features are available on price then the revenue will hit over the skyline. Similarly, add paid features like truck’s capacity, live support, insurance, etc to help your trucking app stand out from other competitors.
Uber Trucking App Development: Features to Include
A panel in truck booking app development describes particular information that will be shared on the screen according to the user. A user will get information about available drivers, previous transactions, etc. A driver will get information about the available bookings and an admin will get information about the number of deliveries done, delivery fare, driver history, customer feedback, and a lot more.
Similarly, the Uber for trucks clone comes with three panels i.e. an admin panel, driver panel, and a customer (user) panel. Let’s proceed to know about the functionalities and features of each panel in a trucking app.
Admin Panel
The admin panel is the application dashboard that provides insights and features of a logistics business operation like fleet management, upcoming bookings, employee management, user data optimisation, revenue data, and a lot more.
Following are the features of the admin panel in Uber for trucks clone:
1. Admin Log-In
This allows the authorised personnel to access the organisation dashboard by logging in through the relevant credentials.
2. Admin Dashboard
This dashboard allows the admin to monitor the various business operations like incoming bookings, pending deliveries, available trucks, fleet management, driver data, and a lot more.
3. Employee Management
The logistics business owner can use this feature to check the number of drivers on a trip, the number of completed deliveries, customer reviews for the service of the driver, driver’s performance, and a lot more.
4. Fleet Management
This feature allows the admin to check the number of trucks on the trip, the maintenance schedule of the trucks, types of lorries available in the fleet, fuel consumption per truck, etc.
Admin can update the booking date and modify the trip estimate according to the trip duration, location, or they can also add different rates for weekend bookings.
6. Notifications & Alerts
This feature works with smart AI where the notifications are sent to the user, driver, and admin on the basis of data optimisation. For admins, it helps them to check instant payments, completed deliveries, vehicle allotment, etc
7. Trip Logs
It is a directory that gives data for every trip on the basis of dimensions like start/end-time, region, vehicle, load, etc.
Drivers Panel
The driver panel in a trucking app allows the driver to manage a booking, check the trip estimates, shipment details, destination location, and share proof of delivery to the shipper.
Following are the features of the driver panel in a truck booking app:
1. Profile Setup
The driver panel provides a particular login credential to each driver. They can also log in via social media account, email id, and OTP sent to their mobile phone or email address.
2. Booking Management
This feature allows drivers to track their upcoming bookings, pending shipments, and previous history.
3. Booking Details
Drivers can use the booking details feature to check information like customer’s name & address, contact data, etc.
4. Freight Management
This feature allows a driver to put information like the available weight capacity of the carrier, remaining fuel, toll & other expenditures, etc.
5. GPS Tracking
GPS vehicle tracking services system assists drivers to navigate the shortest distance to the delivery address, traffic estimates, route optimisation, etc. It also helps users and admin to track the real-time delivery status.
6. Push Notifications
This feature alerts the driver about new consignments, user’s instructions, etc.
7. Invoice Approval
This feature generates the invoice on the basis of toll charges, fuel consumption, parcel’s weight, and total delivery distance, and sends it to the admin for approval.
8. App Feedback
This feature allows the lorry driver to provide feedback about the app performance. It helps developers to upgrade the Uber for trucks clone relevantly.
Shippers Panel
User Panel is another functioning component of the truck booking app development, it assists users to make bookings, check driver performance, and a lot more.
Let’s dive in to know about the features in the user panel of a trucking app like uber:
1. Log-In
This feature allows a user to login into the application via social media profile, email id, and two-step OTP authentication.
2. Truck Booking
In this feature, a user fills the courier weight, parcel pick up & delivery location. According to the courier weight and delivery address, the application assigns a relevant carrier for the booking.
3. GPS
This feature allows a user to track the real-time GPS location of the carrier.
The chatting feature emulates communication between the drivers and the shipper. By using in-app messaging, the shipper can communicate with the driver regarding delivery status, shipment pictures, etc.
5. Trip Fare
Just like the trip estimate feature of the Taxi Dispatch System, this feature should provide the trip estimate to the shipper by adding the starting point and destination. It also helps users to select a reliable lorry vehicle as per their budget.
6. Payment Gateway
Payment Gateway integration is an essential feature for the functioning of a trucking application. It allows a user to make payment via multiple gateways like UPI, e-wallets, debit card/credit card, etc.
7. Trip History
Trip history helps a shipper to analyse the performance of a driver, it allows shippers to check the previous consignments, previous transportation reports, cargo details, and a lot more.
Steps To Follow For Truck booking App Development
In the previous sections, we learned about the features and working of a trucking application. Now you should be curious about building a trucking app like Uber Freight. Let’s spill the beans and get into the process of truck booking app development.
1. Pick a Relevant App Solution
Before planning to invest in a trucking app solution, it is essential to learn about the type of app solutions that can streamline your business idea.
If you’re the owner of a logistics business and want to scale your fleet of trucks, then a uber for trucks clone can expand the scalability of your business.
A marketplace/community-like application that matches the requirements of the shippers with suitable lorry drivers.
2. Hire a Truck Booking App Development Company
It doesn’t matter how brilliant your business idea is, if your app developer does not have enough experience to deliver a user-friendly, and fully functioning app then you cannot penetrate the competitive market.
Check the online reputation, live projects, client testimonials to determine the potential of uber for a trucking app development company.
3. Competitor Analysis
Once you’re done with finalising a reliable mobile app development company, conduct a competitor analysis and check out whether your business model can fulfil the requirements of your target users.
Check case studies of other trucking apps, run surveys like “ What feature do you like in a trucking app, what trucking do you prefer for your shipping requirement, etc’. Such queries will help you to conclude what features your uber for trucks clone needs more research.
4. Launch an MVP
As the name suggests, a minimum viable product is like a beta version of your trucking application that comes with only some essential features. It allows developers to refine the final shape of the app based on all positive and negative feedback.
Factors That Affect the Cost to Develop a Trucking App
The investment cost is an important aspect that calculates the profitability of any business model. Here are some of the factors that affect the cost to develop a trucking app.
1. Technology Stack
The technology stack determines the functional capability and user experience of a mobile app. If you want a robust trucking app then it is important to proceed with the development process with a top-notch technology stack. If you select a low-end stack then the cost of your project will remain within budget but it will not be able to meet up with the expectations of your business model.
2. Types Of Features
Features decide the popularity of a mobile app. However, the number of features is directly proportional to the cost of mobile app development. Therefore, it is important to add generic features instead of adding a whole bunch of premium features that may not be serviceable to all your users.
There are numerous IT companies in the Indian market that provide mobile application solutions. Some people prefer to hire freelancers for their business projects. However, freelancers do not hold sufficient acumen to deliver top-notch trucking apps. Therefore, hire an experienced app development company that offers fully functional app solutions capable of meeting your expectations.
4. Type Of Platform
Releasing your trucking application on a native platform like Android may sound cost-effective but it will limit the reach of your revenue model. Therefore, hire an IT company that provides cross-platform application development as it will provide more user targeting and better functionalities to your uber for trucks clone.
On-Demand Trucking App Development Cost
The more complex the features, the more will be the cost to develop a trucking app. The development of such an app consumes around 2 to 4 months and most of the development companies charge on an hourly basis.
For example, developers in the USA charge around $130 dollars per hour, and meanwhile, in India, the per hour skilled developer cost ranges between $5 to $7.
Following are the cost estimates of On-demand Trucking App Development
Why Choose BR Softech for Truck Booking App Development?
BR Softech is a leading business tycoon in the truck booking app development industry, the company has been serving multiple clients from various niches globally for over 10 years. Our experts can provide you with in-depth insights and the latest features for your trucking app product.
Our team of mobile app developers possess proficiency in all the latest technologies, we have worked over several uber for trucking app development projects with exceptional functionalities and excellent feedback from our clients.
I am Nitin Garg, founder of BR Softech PVT LTD - an award-winning mobile game development company known for its excellence in the gaming domain. We have a team of 180+ exceptional professionals & we have a satisfied clientele of 2.7k+ globally. Driven by an entrepreneurial spirit, I aim to elevate BR Softech to a billion-dollar company.