SR7 Transport — a complete courier operations system

SR7 Transport is my own courier and light haulage business in Seaham: same day courier work, light haulage, furniture transport, business deliveries and pallets across the North East and the UK.

Behind its website sits the biggest thing I have built: SR7 Transport Operations, a complete operations system written as a custom WordPress plugin. It runs a job from the first enquiry to the money in the bank: quote, job, route, schedule, dispatch, driver portal, proof of delivery, invoice and payment. I built it in April and May 2026, it has run the business since, and it is still being extended.

This is not a form with a database behind it. The version running today is about 54,000 lines of code: 48 modules, 821 functions, 12 admin screens, a mobile driver portal and a public tracking page for customers. It went through 244 saved builds on the way.

Most courier firms rent this kind of software by the month. This one is owned outright, and every part of it was built around how a courier job actually runs.

A customer enters a collection and delivery postcode on the website, picks the service and load, and adds what really changes a price: weight, tail lift, two-person jobs, stairs and urgency. The system looks up the road distance and journey time and prices it straight away, with an itemised breakdown: call-out fee, mileage, service, weight band and supplements. Anything unusual is flagged for a manual review instead of being guessed.

The customer can accept the quote online, and an accepted quote becomes a booked job with one click, keeping the same reference all the way through to the invoice.

Before a job goes out, the system works out what it will really cost to run: loaded miles, the empty run home, driver time and handling, using each van's own cost per mile. That comes from the van's fuel economy, the price of diesel and its share of insurance, tax, servicing, MOT and wear. So the price on the job sits next to an estimated profit and margin, for my eyes only.

Jobs move across a dispatch board from booked to awaiting collection, collected, in transit and delivered. A calendar plans the day and flags clashes where a driver or van is double-booked, and the system suggests which driver and van suit a job. Drivers' live positions show on a map, and each customer gets a tracking link of their own.

Drivers do not need an app or a password. Each one gets a private link that opens their jobs on their own phone, with the route, collection and delivery stops, and buttons to move the job on. On the doorstep they capture proof of delivery: the recipient's name, the condition of the goods, a signature, photographs and a timestamp, saved as a PDF evidence pack. Items carry QR labels that are scanned at collection and delivery, multi-drop jobs confirm each stop separately, and failed deliveries can be rebooked.

Every driver record holds their licence, CPC and DBS dates, and every van holds its MOT, tax, insurance and service dates. The system warns before anything runs out, so nothing lapses quietly. Driver records also keep their pay profile, availability and job history.

When a job is completed, the invoice is created and emailed as a PDF on its own. Customers can pay by card, Apple Pay or Google Pay through Stripe, or by bank transfer, and part-payments, balances and overdue invoices are all tracked. Automatic emails keep the customer up to date at every stage, from booking to delivery.

An analytics screen shows live operations, performance, profitability estimates and documents that are about to expire. A costs screen holds the business's fixed overheads. Every record keeps its notes, its status history and an audit trail of who changed what and when.

The system is live at sr7transport.co.uk and runs the business every day. Customer text messages, a new multi-drop quote form for up to eight stops, fuller profit reporting and a link to accounting software are built or planned in the next version, and are not switched on yet.

No trading figures are published here, and every customer, driver and vehicle detail on these screens is blurred. What the page shows is the build.