Axle | Devpost

Inspiration

The logistics industry is filled with inefficiencies. Shippers struggle to find available, reliable drivers, while independent truck drivers and logistics companies face barriers accessing new jobs and getting paid fairly and promptly. Inspired by platforms like Uber and Upwork, Axle was born to bridge this gap: a mobile-first logistics marketplace that simplifies job discovery, matching, and secure payment for both sides. A win-win.

What it does

Axle connects shippers and drivers in a seamless mobile app experience: POST JOBS - Shippers can post logistics jobs, specifying route, commodity and a price they're willing to pay (among other details) FIND WORK - Drivers can view available jobs nearby based on their truck type, capacity, and preferred routes. GET PAID - A secure escrow payment system powered by Stripe facilitates safe and reliable payments. Shippers pre-authorize payment, and funds are released only when both parties confirm successful delivery.

How I built it

Frontend: As a data engineer, this is far from my area of expertise. But with some inspiration from www.dribbble.com, and some creative ideas, I managed to prompt Bolt in creating a fairly modern and usable app!

Backend & Auth:

Leveraged Supabase for authentication, real-time database, storage, and user profile management.
Payments: Integrated Stripe to manage marketplace payments, including job escrow and profit share logic (10% marketplace fee, 20% “Urgent” markup).
Location Services: Used Google Maps APIs for radius-based job filtering, mapping and location field autofill.

Challenges I ran into

One Man Show - It's been an intense, but amazing journey. Learning new tools, and build an entire Uber-style app. All while working a full-time job and running a household. It's been a difficult but rewarding journey. An app within an app - I had to scrap the messenger part of the app because it was too much. Like building Whatsapp WITHIN Axle, all in 1 month. Close, but no cigar. Who's who - Designing separate user flows (Driver vs. Shipper) without duplicating components took careful planning around dynamic routing and conditional rendering.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

"Look Ma, I made it! (barely)" - I'm immensely proud of stepping out of my comfort zone and commiting hundreds of hours to a new project!

What I learned

Building a website, online shop, mobile app, or anything you can think of, is more possible now than it has EVER been. Commiting to an idea and seeing how far you can run with it is all it takes to (maybe) make something great! If it isn't great, just prompt something new!