A Transport Management System that fits your planning, your drivers and your customers, not the other way round. We build custom TMS solutions for mid-market hauliers and 3PL providers who have outgrown Excel but don't want a Transwide licence.
The Transport Management System is the heart of a carrier: from shipment acceptance and planning to dispatch, telematics, proof of delivery, invoicing and CO2 reporting. It touches every department (planners, drivers, operations management, finance, customer service) and integrates with every chain partner: shippers, charterers, customs, fuel suppliers, ERP systems and accounting packages. A poorly chosen TMS costs you years of workarounds; a well-fitting TMS makes growth and margin control possible.
We don't replace Transwide, Descartes, Centric Distribution Floor or Manhattan TMS for general commodity work. Those packages do what they need to for broad flows, and their licence costs pay for themselves there. What we do build is custom TMS solutions for specialty transport, deep integrations between TMS, WMS, accounting and telematics, white-label customer portals, and subcontractor cascades where enterprise packages are either too expensive or too rigid. See our wider view on custom transport software development and on working with a transport software partner for the long-term relationship.
Mid-market hauliers with ten to a hundred trucks, courier companies that have grown out of Excel but cannot or will not make the move to Pionira or Cordel, 3PL and 4PL providers, logistics cooperatives, specialty carriers (car transport, ship handling, hazmat, pharma cold chain), e-commerce fulfilment businesses with their own transport, and city distribution companies most often recognise themselves in our projects. What they have in common is that their operations have a few specific traits on which standard TMS packages keep getting stuck.
A mature Transport Management System consists of modules that each deliver value on their own but only show their full strength together. We do not build them all at once; we start where the pain is greatest and the business case is strongest.
Order management and shipment acceptance processes orders from customers or shippers, validates pricing agreements and manages service levels (express, day run, dedicated). Planning and dispatch handles route optimisation across multi-stop runs, with time windows per stop, required driver skills (ADR, Driver CPC specialisms, language level) and vehicle types (refrigerated, tail-lift, crane, ADR-approved). Telematics integration pulls in real-time positions, fuel consumption and engine data via Webfleet, Trimble, Geotab, Volvo Connect or Daimler Truck Suite, and uses it for live ETAs and exception management.
The driver app gives the driver instructions per stop, photo evidence of damage and cargo, hours recording in line with the CAO Beroepsgoederenvervoer and EU 561/2006 driving times, and digital signature for proof of delivery. The customer portal gives shippers and end customers real-time track and trace, document downloads and self-service for new bookings, white-label in your own house style so that it strengthens your brand rather than a software vendor's.
Invoicing and rate structures cover per-km, per-stop and per-pallet pricing, with fuel surcharges, ADR surcharges, waiting time, weekend premiums and tiered charter rates. The document flow handles CMR, customs documents and eCMR, which for cross-border transport is increasingly becoming the norm in 2026. Subcontractor management covers charters and freelance carriers: onboarding, contracts, automatic rate calculation and performance tracking. Fuel tracking and CO2 reporting provide the figures for CSRD Scope 3 and customer reports, while maintenance integrations with your CMMS help prevent a lorry from unexpectedly going out of service. With a yard and dock management integration, the handover from road to warehouse runs smoothly.
Finally, the reporting layer: KPIs per planner, margin per route, client SLA reports, on-time delivery per depot, load utilisation, empty kilometres and fuel efficiency per driver and per vehicle. And the integration layer with ERP systems such as Exact and AFAS, with shipper systems (EDI, REST, portals), and with accounting for automatic invoice export and debtor monitoring. AI-augmented features, such as predictive ETA, dynamic re-routing and anomaly detection, we build as the final layer, so they are fed by a clean data foundation rather than by a TMS that is still struggling itself.
Not every module needs to go live at once. We work with prioritisation: what solves the sharpest pain, what has the fastest payback, and which modules can come later without disrupting the architecture. A good TMS architecture leaves room to add a charter portal, a yard integration or an AI layer later, without having to rebuild everything.
Which approach suits you depends on the complexity of your operation and the number of external systems that need to connect. We advise on the right route during the first conversation.
A working planning, dispatch and shipment flow for a single location. Multi-stop routes, time windows, driver skills and vehicle types. A driver app with instructions, photo evidence and hours recording. Ready to replace the first Excel files.
On top of the planning core: telematics integrations (Webfleet, Trimble, Geotab, Volvo Connect), a white-label customer portal with track and trace, invoicing with rate structures (per-km, per-stop, fuel and ADR surcharges) and the first accounting or ERP integration. Subcontractor management for charters.
A mission-critical TMS for 3PL or 4PL providers with multiple depots, subcontractor cascades, deep ERP integration (Exact, AFAS, SAP), eCMR flow, fuel and CO2 tracking and AI-augmented planning. Includes shipper integrations and SLA reporting per customer.
A production-ready Transport Management System, plus everything around it needed to manage and develop it yourself.
Four patterns where off-the-shelf TMS packages fall short and custom development pays for itself. If one of these sounds familiar, we would be glad to talk.
Car transport, ship handling, hazardous goods (ADR), pharmaceutical cold chain (GDP), food (HACCP) or last-mile city distribution: standard TMS fields simply don't reflect your reality. You have too many exceptions and too many manual adjustments, and planners keep spreadsheets on the side to plug gaps the package won't accommodate.
You have Exact or AFAS, a WMS, a separate accounting system, and telematics from three brands running side by side because the fleet is mixed. A standard TMS connects at a single point and handles the rest through a nightly export. You need a platform where everything depends on each other in real time, with one source of truth for shipment, trip and invoice.
You are a 3PL or 4PL with twenty or more contracted carriers, freelance drivers and partners. Subcontractor management, automated rate calculation, document flow (CMR, eCMR), performance reporting and a carrier portal become business-critical, yet standard packages usually handle your own fleet well and the carriers barely, if at all.
Manhattan, Oracle TM and SAP TM are priced for large multinationals and require an implementation team that a mid-market carrier doesn't have. Pionira, Centric and Cordel are often good for purely Dutch transport but struggle with a specialist or international variant. Bespoke development scales with you without per-shipment licences, at a total cost of ownership that works for mid-market businesses.
With OneDayBuild, we turn your idea into something tangible in one day for €1,150, so you can see whether further development is worth the investment. Decide to go ahead with the full build? Then we credit the full cost.
Explore OneDayBuild →We map your current flows: how a shipment travels from customer to invoice, which telematics are already in use, and where the pain points lie. We test whether bespoke development is the right route or whether a standard package will do. If the latter is true, we will tell you so.
A workshop with your planners and operations team, plus shadow sessions in dispatch and with a driver on the road. At the end: scope, planning, a first screen flow for planning, the customer portal and the driver app. Includes a plan for data migration from your current system.
A working build every two weeks, with an explanation. Your planners test alongside us on real shipments, and telematics integrations are validated early so there are no surprises at go-live. A first working core is ready after a few sprints for the pilot branch.
Rolled out in phases: first one branch or one customer stream, then scale up. Training for planners and drivers, parallel running alongside the old system during the transition, and ongoing maintenance for security and development in response to new regulation such as eCMR and CSRD.
We deliberately choose not to reflexively call for "custom" development. The standard TMS landscape is mature, and for broad flows a package is often the wiser option. We know the market: Transwide (Wabco/ZF) and Transporeon Platform for shipper-carrier networks, Descartes and Manhattan TMS for enterprise logistics, Trimble Transportation and MercuryGate for flows with a North American flavour, Alpega and BluJay for European multimodal, and at the top end Oracle Transportation Management and SAP TM for the largest multinationals.
In the Dutch SME market we often see Centric Distributievloer, Pionira, Cordel, Routyn and eMagic. Solid packages with deep roots in the Dutch transport sector. For pure trip administration with standard integrations they are often perfectly adequate, and the licence pays for itself. The tipping point towards custom development comes when your operation has niche requirements the package does not support, when you genuinely need several systems to work as one, or when you, as a 3PL or brand, need your own customer portal that must not carry a "Powered by [package vendor]" label.
We are also honest about when custom development is not the sensible route. If your requirement fits a package and you have no specific integration or branding need, we recommend the package and would rather point you towards an implementation partner. Our value lies in building something a package cannot be - not in rebuilding something that already exists.
Transport is regulated. A TMS without compliance built in is a ticking time bomb for your operations and finance teams. As standard, we build in: GDPR for personal data of drivers and contacts, EU 561/2006 for driving times and rest breaks (linked to tachograph data or telematics), AETR for journeys outside the EU, the CAO Beroepsgoederenvervoer (Dutch road haulage collective agreement) for working hours and allowances, and ADR protocols for dangerous goods (UN numbers, classes, segregation rules).
For specific cargo, additional layers: GDP (Good Distribution Practice) for pharmaceutical cold chain with temperature monitoring and audit trail, HACCP for food with cooling-chain logging, eCMR as the digital alternative to the paper CMR (the legal infrastructure has been ratified across the EU; for cross-border transport a mandate is in sight for 2026). At IT level we are building towards NIS2 (essential entities in logistics) and CSRD scope 3 for CO2 reporting to your shippers. See how we design AI features in transport within these compliance frameworks.
What clients in transport and logistics usually want to know before we start.
A half-hour introductory call, no obligation. We listen to your workflow, look together at which parts are causing pain, and give direction you can act on, even if the outcome is that a standard package suits you better than custom development.
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