EGS Customs & Logistic is a Rotterdam-based freight forwarder moving containers and general cargo by road between the Port of Rotterdam, Antwerp and inland hubs across the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. It runs a mixed fleet of about 250 own and subcontracted trucks. Its small internal IT team maintained the core transport management system but had no capacity for new products. Planners built routes by hand, and customers called constantly for shipment updates.

• 01

  Manual planning.

  Planners built daily routes in spreadsheets, leaving trucks returning empty.

• 02

  No live visibility.

  Customers had no self-service tracking and phoned for every update.

• 03

  Small IT team.

  The in-house team was fully occupied keeping core systems running.

• 04

  Long-term roadmap.

  The company needed an ongoing team, not a single project.

We provided a dedicated engineering pod of five that works alongside the client's IT team under their product owner. The pod's first priority was route optimisation: a planning engine that combines orders, truck positions, driver hours and port slot times to suggest daily routes and backhaul loads. Planners review and adjust suggestions rather than starting from scratch. The second priority was live tracking, which streams GPS data from trucks, predicts arrival times and gives customers a tracking portal and automated updates. The pod works in two-week sprints and shares on-call duty with the client's team.

• Route optimisation engine

  Daily route and backhaul suggestions based on orders, driver hours and slots.

• Planner workspace

  Map-based view to review, drag and confirm routes.

• Live tracking

  GPS streaming from own and subcontracted trucks.

• ETA prediction

  Arrival estimates that update with traffic and delays.

• Customer portal

  Self-service tracking with email and API updates.

1. 1

   Mixed fleet data

   Subcontractors used different telematics providers. We built adapters for six providers into one data stream.

2. 2

   Driver-hour rules

   EU driving and rest-time rules were built into the planner so every suggested route is legal.

3. 3

   Planner adoption

   We designed the planner to suggest, not dictate, and ran weekly sessions with planners to improve it.

1. Weeks 1–3

   01 Onboard

   Joined the client's team, learned the TMS and agreed the roadmap.

2. Months 1–3

   02 Tracking foundation

   Built the GPS data pipeline and customer portal.

3. Months 4–7

   03 Route optimisation

   Built and piloted the planning engine with two planners.

4. Months 8–11 onward

   04 Scale

   Rolled out to all planners, added ETA prediction and API access.

Planners now start each day with an optimised plan instead of a blank spreadsheet, and trucks carry more backhaul loads. Customers track shipments themselves, freeing the customer service team. The pod continues as a long-term extension of the client's IT department.