Ordering software for a pit that sells by the tonne

An order, start to finish

What it takes off you

1. 1

   An hourly rate turns into a number they can see

   You set a base on every load and a rate per kilometre out from the pit, once. Or flat fees by distance, or a flat rate close in and by the kilometre past it. From then on somebody typing in an address gets a real figure instead of an hourly rate they cannot use, and you stop being the calculator.

2. 2

   Twenty tonnes is loads, and loads are what you charge for

   You tell it how much of a material goes on the truck you would send for it, and an order is priced by the loads it really takes rather than as one trip. A single tandem load for a driveway and a job that needs four are two different prices without anybody working it out.

3. 3

   Past where you go, it says so

   You set how far out you will run, and past it nothing is quoted. It does not guess, and it does not quietly put a number on a job you would lose money on. The customer is told it is outside the area, and you can still take the order on the phone with your own figure on it if you decide to go.

4. 4

   The drive time is on the order anyway

   The price comes off the road distance, but the minutes are worked out and kept on the booking with it. You see how far out a load really is when you are deciding what goes on which truck.

5. 5

   Contractors stop being retyped

   The ones who order every week are already in there with their sites and their history. A repeat order is not a repeat of the paperwork.

6. 6

   Paid at the checkout, straight onto the schedule

   With Stripe connected an order is paid when it is placed and lands on your schedule, because your delivery days already decided it fits. Without Stripe it comes in as a request and you say yes to it. Cash and e-transfer are unchanged either way.

Asked before

Straight answers

I bill trucking by the hour, not by the load. Can it do that?

Not by the hour, and that is worth being straight about. What it does is the closest honest thing: a base on every load plus a rate per kilometre, measured one way by road out from your pit. You can also set flat fees by distance, or a flat rate close in and by the kilometre past it, which is how most of these rate cards read once they are written down. Either way your customer sees a number instead of a rate they cannot turn into one, and the drive time is still worked out and kept on every order.

I run a tandem and a tri-axle and pick by the size of the job.

The load size belongs to the material, so you set it to the truck you would actually send for that material. Where you genuinely sell the same thing two ways, listing it twice with its own load size is what yards do and it works.

What happens when somebody is right out past where I go?

They are told it is outside your area rather than given a price, and nothing lands on your schedule. If you decide to go anyway, you take it on the phone and put your own figure on it.

I sell by the tonne and half of them ask in yards.

You pick what one of a thing is, by the tonne or by the yard, and the page prices and charges in that. Listing the same material both ways is fine when your customers genuinely split.

Most of my customers are contractors on account.

Then the page is not really for them, it is for the ones you do not have yet. Your account customers keep ordering the way they always have and you put those on yourself, with the delivery priced the same way.

What does it cost?

Free to start, no card. The platform fee is 10% of what a customer pays online through your page, and only when you actually get paid. Stripe charges you card processing at your own rate, separately, the same as anywhere you take a card. The arithmetic worth knowing: once about $2,000 a month is going through the page, Growth at $147 costs you less than staying free, because the fee drops to 2.5%. Past that, free is the expensive one. Growth is also where a missed call texts the caller your booking page, which is the load that came in while you were under a truck.

Who sets it up?

I do, from your own site and your own rates, before you have agreed to anything. Nothing goes live until you have looked at it and said so.