You can send a client a link that shows their delivery moving on a map, with no login and no app at their end, and it expires when the vehicle arrives. That replaces the phone call where you promise it is on its way.
Sliema is the case everyone recognises. A road closes without warning, traffic backs up behind a scammel and construction plant, and your 11:00 drop becomes a 12:15 drop. The client rings. You say it is on its way, and they have nothing to go on beyond your word.
How the link actually gets sent
Sending one takes three steps. Pick the vehicle. Create the tracking link and set when it expires. Send it by WhatsApp or email. The person receiving it does not create an account and does not install anything.
What they open is the same live picture you have: position, speed and status, updating as the vehicle moves. On your side, every vehicle sits on one map together, so you can answer a second client while the first one is still watching their own van.
A tracking link shows the vehicle's position and speed, not the state of the load inside it.
Telling the client before they ask
Draw a zone around your own yard and you get an alert the moment a vehicle leaves it. That is the message the client wants, sent the minute it is true rather than twenty minutes later. There are 20+ alert types , delivered by WhatsApp, SMS, email or push.
When the drop time is disputed in March
Live links are for the day itself. Arguments happen weeks later, usually about what time the vehicle was on site. You can replay any trip along its exact route with a speed chart, and the history stays queryable for 2+ years rather than 90 days.
Letting your own system send the links
If you run hundreds of jobs a week, creating each link by hand is the part that falls over. There is a documented REST API , so the system you already run can create and send the links itself. The expiry, the schedule, a repeating schedule and the valid period all come from what that system already knows about the job.
Who is already sending these
These links are in day to day use by several Yipii operators and their clients, for deliveries and for subcontracted work. Maltese summer school operators send them to parents as well.
We have built and supported this in Malta since 2010, on Teltonika and Cellocator hardware we fit and maintain ourselves. That matters mostly when something stops reporting and you want the person who installed it to pick up.
Where I would start
If I were starting tomorrow, I would not roll this out across the whole fleet. I would pick the one client who rings most often, send them a link on their next delivery, and see whether the calls stop. That tells you more than any demo I can give you.
Tell us how your jobs come in and we will go through what the link would look like on your clients' phones.
Chris Bartolo, Yipii IoT and Mobility