Drop-Trailer Pool Manager
Track your drop-trailer pool, run a dwell-vs-free-time clock per trailer, and flag the ones at risk of detention before per-diem charges creep in.
A login-protected yard tool that logs trailer drops and pickups, counts free time per carrier, flags trailers heading for detention, and routes return requests through a coordinator's approval before anything is acted on.
Before you start
- A free Vercel account
- A free Supabase account
- A free Resend account
- Your trailer pool list and per-carrier free-time terms (a spreadsheet is fine)
The problem this kills
Drop trailers sit in your yard, and the free-time clock is ticking on every one of them. Each carrier has its own free-time terms, every trailer was dropped on a different day, and somebody is supposed to be watching all of it on a whiteboard or a spreadsheet that's already out of date by lunch.
Then the per-diem invoice shows up. Detention charges for trailers nobody returned in time, charges you can't easily dispute because there's no clean record of when each trailer was dropped or picked up. The money leaks out a little at a time, which is exactly why it's so hard to stop.
The real problem isn't laziness. It's that nobody can hold a live dwell clock for dozens of trailers across half a dozen carriers in their head. You need a tool that does the counting for you and taps you on the shoulder before a trailer crosses into charge territory.
What you'll build
A simple, login-protected web app for your yard. You log every trailer drop and pickup. The tool knows each carrier's free-time terms, runs a per-trailer dwell-vs-free-time clock, and shows you a live pool board: what's in the yard, loaded or empty, how many free days are left, and which trailers are about to start racking up per-diem.
When a trailer is at risk, the tool flags it and drafts a return request. Nothing gets acted on until the yard coordinator reviews it and clicks approve. You get a daily pool report and at-risk alerts by email, so the clock is never running quietly in the background again.
What's inside the Implementation Plan
The plan is a step-by-step runbook you paste into an AI coding agent (Claude Code), which builds the tool with you - no coding experience required.
It opens by interviewing you about your yard: which carriers you work with, how their free-time terms actually read, how you name trailers and carriers today, your typical and peak trailer counts, who logs drops, and the messy exceptions (weekends, holidays, loaded-vs-empty rules, swaps). It reflects a short tailored spec back to you and waits for your thumbs-up - so the tool fits your pool, not a generic template.
From there it walks you through building the database, the drop/pickup logging screens, the dwell clock, the at-risk flagging logic, the coordinator approval gate, and the email reports - each step ending in a ready-to-paste prompt.
The governance it includes (this is the point)
- Login so only your yard team can see and use the tool.
- Row-level security so each organization only ever sees its own trailers and carriers.
- A full audit trail - who logged which drop, who approved which return, and exactly when.
- A human approval gate - the tool flags and drafts return requests, but a coordinator must review and approve before anything is treated as actioned.
- Duplicate guards - the same trailer-plus-drop-event can't be logged twice, so your dwell counts stay honest.
Who it's for
Yard coordinators and transportation managers who own the drop-trailer pool and are tired of finding out about detention charges after the invoice. If you can keep a spreadsheet, you can build and run this.
You've got this - paste the first prompt and let the interview tailor the rest.