Haulage
Haulage maintenance planner software
The O-licence maintenance file on one screen. Every vehicle and trailer, when it was last inspected, when the next one falls due and what is already over, with the defect reports on the vehicle they came off. Built for the way your transport office already runs, hosted in the UK, and looked after by the people who built it.
What a haulier actually has to hold
Two boards, one fleet
- Safety inspections, planned and recorded
- Annual test and tachograph calibration dates
- Driver defect reports, raised and cleared
- Driver licence checks, CPC and debriefs
- The month, ready when somebody asks
Two boards exist in most transport offices. One plans the loads. The other is the one with the licence attached.
A maintenance system answers "is that vehicle legal to go out this morning, and can I show it" without anybody going to find out. One vehicle is one record: the interval it is inspected to, the date of the last sheet, the date of the next one, the test, the calibration and every defect anybody has raised against it.
Plenty of operators run all of that on a wall chart, and it got them this far. Plenty more have a transport management system for the planning and something else for the maintenance file, because the system was bought to plan loads. The question is whether the record is written as the work happens, or afterwards.
A first system might cover one yard and fifteen vehicles. The same system two years on can carry three depots, subcontracted hauliers with their own logins, and the fitters signing sheets off on a tablet in the workshop.
What you would be looking at, in the order a day happens
Six screens from our own example system. Real screens rather than mock-ups, and the operator in them, Whinberry Transport, is invented, along with every registration, trailer number and driver. Yours would carry your fleet, your intervals and your words for things.
What the guidance asks for
There is no new rule behind this page and no date in front of it. The duties below have been the same for years, and they are the reason the maintenance file exists at all.
| The interval is the operator's | Set against the age and type of vehicle, the load, the operation and the terrain, and written into the maintenance undertaking on the licence. The published table runs from four weeks at the arduous end to thirteen at the lighter end, and a six-weekly interval is where a lot of general haulage settles. |
|---|---|
| Planned six months ahead | A scheduling system, planner or wall chart identifying inspection dates at least six months in advance. The wall chart is named in the guidance, which is worth knowing: the chart is not the problem. |
| Kept fifteen months | Safety inspection records and drivers' defect reports, for at least fifteen months. That is the part a chart cannot do, because a chart is a plan rather than a record. |
| A walk round every day | At least one check in every twenty-four-hour period the vehicle is used, covering the whole vehicle or combination. |
None of that is hard once it is captured as the work happens. It is only hard fifteen months later, when somebody asks for a sheet.
We build the records, not the legal advice. The duties above are from DVSA's guide to maintaining roadworthiness, last updated 28 April 2025. Check your own obligations with DVSA and the traffic commissioner, and if the guidance changes we will say so.
Who it suits, and who it doesn't
Where this kind of system earns its keep
- Vehicles and trailers on different inspection intervals
- One transport manager holding every date in their head
- Drivers who should be raising defects where the office sees them
- Fitters, or a contract garage, signing sheets off
- Records that get assembled when somebody asks for them
Where we fit best
A small fleet off one yard can keep its dates on a wall chart for a long time. The system earns its keep once those dates need to reach more than one person, and a first step can be the inspection and test dates on their own.
If the fitters and drivers are already on maintenance software, keep it. We build what still sits beside it, the parts it was never built for, and join the two where it allows.
And if what you want is one system across load planning, tachograph analysis and invoicing, that is a real project with a real budget, quoted as one.
Where it saves time, AI features can be built in too: a defect from a walk round check written up for the workshop, or an inspection document read in and its dates checked against the vehicle. More on AI and automation.
Usually built alongside compliance and inspection records, asset and equipment registers or scheduling and run sheets. The rest are on the services page.
Ask about our free Business Systems Assessment
An hour with whoever runs the day to day. Clear recommendations to act on.
We look at how the work actually runs and what it runs on, then send you a list of what we would change, what each change would do for the business, and what it would take. In person or online, whichever suits you. Nothing to pay, nothing to sign.
- One hour
- In person or online
- Recommendations we talk you through
Honest answers
- Does this make us compliant?
- No system does that on its own. What it does is hold the records in the shape the guidance describes, one per vehicle and one per inspection, current and findable, with a date and a name against each. The undertakings on your licence stay yours, and the advice comes from the regulator.
- Does it do our tachograph analysis?
- No, and we would say so before you asked. Whoever analyses the cards carries on doing it. What we hold is the debrief that came off the analysis: which driver, which infringement, whether it was sat down and gone through, and on what date.
- We already have a transport management system.
- Then keep it for the loads. We build the maintenance file it never covered, and join the two. Where a planning system or an accounts package has an export or an interface, the fleet list and the jobs can come across so nobody retypes a registration that already exists.
- Our intervals aren't all the same.
- Nor should they be. The interval belongs to the vehicle and the work it does, so the planner is built that way, each vehicle counting from its own last inspection rather than off one shared cycle.
- My drivers won't use it.
- They use a phone all day already. There is nothing to install, the walk round is less writing than the paper sheet, and we take them through it before go-live rather than leaving you to explain it.
- How long does it take?
- A first system is weeks rather than months, and bigger ones go live in pieces so the useful part arrives early. Scope, price and dates are agreed in writing before anything starts, with what is not included written as plainly as what is.
Talk to us
Tell us how the inspection dates get set and chased now, and what you would want to see that you cannot. That is usually enough to say whether we can help.
Ring, 8am to 6pm Monday to Friday and Saturday mornings, or use the form below. Pick what you'd like to keep track of, add a line if you want to, and leave a name and a way to reach you.