Improving data accessibility remotely, offline and on-the-go while streamlining oversized haulage industry complexities

Driving towards digitalization

The concept for Mother Trucking was born in 2023 after a conversation between the founders, Kitti Bradley and Jason Teunissen, and their families, who have been in the heavy diesel industry for generations. The goal was straightforward yet impactful: to help haulage companies embrace technology and avoid being left behind.

“We believe every industry needs to go digital in the next five years, or your company risks insolvency,” says Teunissen. “About 80 percent of the lifting and shifting business in the world consists of small to medium enterprises that don’t really have a budget for bespoke software or an information technology department.”

Mother Trucking aimed to create a simple solution, leveraging their expertise to help small and midsize enterprises (SMEs) embrace process automation and keep up with the rapidly evolving digital landscape.

For this, the company built their platform using the Mendix™ platform, leveraging the full potential of low code. Mendix is part of the Siemens Xcelerator business platform of software, hardware and services. Using this solution allowed Mother Trucking to rapidly develop a system to streamline the complexities of the over-sized haulage industry, from everyday construction to natural disaster recovery.

Leveraging the cloud when disaster strikes

To realize their digital vision, Mother Trucking needed a development platform that could offer a simple, accessible interface for users reluctant to adopt digital solutions while also providing the ability to rapidly build out and validate concepts. Low-code development was the ideal solution, allowing Mother Trucking to leverage visual development tools while helping the founders continue building their technical skills.

“With Mendix, a good user experience is invisible,” says Teunissen. “The backend is powerful, but users don’t see its complexity on the frontend.”

Mendix was also the right tool for the team to use, as its offline progressive web app (PWA) capabilities allow drivers to access the application when offline, which is a common scenario when bringing equipment to new developers with limited cellular data.

“Cloud native platforms just make sense for trucking businesses with the nature of the kind of work they do,” says Teunissen. “It makes everything more accessible, so why not leverage it?”

For Bradley and Teunissen, community was another core element of their vision. New Zealand, frequently affected by natural disasters such as tropical cyclones, provided an urgent backdrop for their mission.

In 2023, a powerful Category 3 storm named Cyclone Gabrielle displaced 11,000 people, leaving the region without power, clean water, gas or internet for three months. Emergency services faced immense challenges in coordinating their efforts without a cloud-native platform, which hindered communication, making rescues and recovery operations difficult.

Although New Zealand’s geographic isolation appeals to travelers, it presents a challenge during such emergencies. The country’s remoteness makes rescue missions difficult, and as climate change exacerbates flooding, power outages and landslides, the need for rapid response and adaptability becomes even more critical.

Mother Trucking was not just a way to enhance operational efficiency but also an opportunity to make a significant impact on New Zealanders and other countries facing similar issues like Canada, Chile, Indonesia, Japan and Papua New Guinea. By simplifying and automating many of the complexities of heavy haulage, they hope to improve the agility and effectiveness of lifting and shifting projects when disasters strike.

Mobilizing dispatch

Mother Trucking’s end-to-end solution is the first of its kind in the industry, allowing trucking companies to digitally manage their fleet and provide remote dispatch.

Development began in March 2023, with an initial plan to launch with one customer later that year. However, as the team engaged with more companies, they realized the broader impact their solution could have for the industry.

After gathering feedback and refining their vision, the team began developing version two of the platform in December 2023. This update simplifies managing fluctuating pricing structures, offering a flexible price book engine that automates accurate estimates, quotes and invoices for companies.

“Our product’s core value allows lifting and shifting companies to operate their business digitally and manage all the dependencies in one place,” says Teunissen. “It makes their data accessible remotely, offline and on-the-go, wherever they run their business.”

In late 2024, Mother Trucking softlaunched its solution, enabling users to create profiles and input data to begin receiving actionable insights.

Mother Trucking used and created various widgets in the Mendix Marketplace. For example, a “combo-box widget” to improve efficiency by showing users a drop-down list to filter and display data like financial details or truck routes. Another example is a Bizzomate Scheduler module, which is a visual tool customers can use to plan, execute and track projects, organizing workloads quickly, planning resources efficiently and promoting collaboration. Thanks to open standards and open-source technologies via Mendix, developers had the flexibility to extend their application’s capabilities.

Keeping the wheels turning thanks to community

At Mother Trucking, low code and the local community are at the core of their creativity and innovation. Whether engaging with mentors, industry experts or the 24/7 Mendix community, the team has access to a vast network of support and guidance.

“Community is at the core of our mission,” says Bradley. “Whether that is helping build a digitally resilient community within the mobile crane industry or as developers engaging in the Mendix community to get mentorship and ensure our product is built with the most innovative features we can use.

“The forum is so friendly, and there’s always someone online to help you. Plus, access to Mendix documentation means you can find what you need to advance your journey.”

Teunissen and Bradley also engage with their customers to iterate and improve their dispatch management platform in a more collaborative, user-driven way. Their clients contribute to the public roadmap and can upvote other suggestions. Every platform update contains release notes that acknowledge the person who found the issue or proposed the solution.

“We believe that, without crowd-sourcing the changes and updates to the application, we can’t truly know if it works for our customers,” says Teunissen.

By consistently putting the customer front and center in its development, Mother Trucking ensures its solutions truly align with user needs. This engagement, combined with the flexibility of Mendix to easily adjust the application, creates a powerful foundation for continuous improvement.

Speeding ahead with low-code development

To date, Mother Trucking has won three awards for its digital innovation, including the People’s Choice Award from the Ministry of Awesome (MOA) Callaghan Innovation Accelerator in 2023. Teunissen and Bradley expect 2025 to be a ground-breaking year.

The duo will continue prioritizing Mother Trucking’s users and community needs. Key initiatives include a strong focus on accessibility with voice-to-text, visual cues and automation of calculations, further reducing the risk of human error.

The focus now is on getting the platform into the hands of small- to medium-sized lifting and shifting companies and continuing to improve the solution.

“Despite being a two-person team, we’ve done a lot in just 18 months with Mendix,” says Teunissen. “That’s the power of low code. You can build your first proof of concept in a cloud-based environment, and the next thing you know, you’re releasing it into the wild.”

“In the next year, we hope to get more trucking companies to the other side of the digital curve using our product to help them operate more efficiently, save money and hopefully see fewer insolvencies,” says Bradley.