Building a Mileage-Tracking App for Transportation Workers

For developers and engineers building B2B applications, delivering robust features across diverse industries is rarely a one-size-fits-all endeavor. Each vertical—from healthcare and finance to manufacturing and logistics—introduces its own unique set of requirements, compliance considerations, and user expectations. Navigating these nuances often involves balancing technical complexity with practical usability, all while keeping long-term scalability in mind.

Within the transportation and logistics space, for example, solutions must be tailored to the needs of a mobile workforce that includes independent truck drivers and gig workers. These professionals rely on precise, background-enabled mileage tracking to streamline financial management, reduce administrative burdens, and ultimately improve their bottom line. Achieving this level of accuracy and reliability poses a distinct challenge for dev teams, requiring careful selection of technologies, strategic data handling, and rigorous real-world testing.

This post walks through how our team at LaunchPad Lab tackled the complexities of building a mileage-tracking solution for a B2B mobile app serving the transportation gig-workers. By exploring the technical considerations we encountered and the solutions we developed, we aim to equip B2B dev and engineering teams with insights they can apply to their own projects—no matter the industry.

Solving Background Mileage-Tracking for Mobile Workforce Professionals

Professionals in the transportation and gig work sectors rely heavily on mileage tracking to maintain records for tax filings, expense reimbursement, and business optimization. However, our client identified a critical gap in their app: a mileage tracking system that could operate seamlessly, even when running in the background. This feature was critical, as truck drivers and gig workers often need to track their mileage throughout the day without constant interaction with their mobile devices. Additionally, many users rely on other apps, such as Google Maps for GPS navigation, meaning the mileage tracker needed to function reliably while the app was in the background.

Leveraging Capacitor Geolocation Plugin for Precise Mileage Management

To address this challenge, our team turned to the Capacitor Community plugin for background geolocation tracking. While the official Capacitor geolocation plugin lacked the necessary background support, the community-maintained plugin provided the robust functionality we needed.

Technical Implementation: Developing a Robust Mobile Mileage Tracking System

1. Spiking and Risk Mitigation: Before development, we conducted a spike to evaluate a few promising approaches for geolocation tracking. This allowed us to test the fundamentals on our devices and reduce risks associated with selecting a solution without sufficient validation.
2. Integrated the Capacitor Community Plugin: Based on our findings, we selected the Capacitor Community plugin for its support of both foreground and background geolocation tracking. We configured it to align with the app’s specific tracking requirements.
3. Customized Tracking Options: We tailored settings such as distance filters and background messaging to optimize the user experience and balance performance with accuracy.
4. Implemented Location Callbacks: Real-time location updates allowed us to calculate distances and dynamically update mileage during trips, ensuring users always had up-to-date trip details.
5. Ensured Data Persistence with Local Storage: We leveraged local storage to maintain accurate mileage records across app sessions. Syncing trip data to local storage ensured users could continue tracking seamlessly, even when the app was not actively in use.
6. Enhanced Data Reliability with Frequent Backend Updates: To reduce the risk of data loss—whether due to a phone dying or an app crash—we implemented frequent backend updates. Trip data, including mileage and location details (latitude and longitude), is synced every five minutes, ensuring critical information is always securely stored.

Overcoming Key Challenges in Mobile Geolocation Tracking

As with any complex feature development, we encountered several challenges during the process:

• Time Zone Management: Time zones can be complex, as a trip might start in one time zone, end in another, and later be viewed by the user in a third time zone. To ensure accurate and consistent trip timestamps, we captured the time zone at multiple points throughout the trip. This time zone information is displayed alongside timestamps in the UI, providing clarity and reducing potential confusion for users.
• Platform Disparities: Native development often involves navigating differences between platforms, and we encountered subtle variations between iOS and Android. These included differences in configuring the geolocation plugin, handling precise location settings, and managing permissions to ensure consistent functionality across both platforms.
• Timer Workaround: Apple’s “Nap App” feature slows down app processes when running in the background, which affected the accuracy of timers. To address this, we redesigned the feature to avoid displaying a second-by-second timer and instead relied on timestamps for accurate tracking, rather than using a setInterval timer.
• Thoroughly Testing in Real-World Scenarios: QA for this feature required testing in motion, such as being in a moving car, to ensure tracking worked accurately. Testing on both iOS and Android devices added complexity, requiring multiple iterative cycles of refining the code, rebuilding the app, and verifying functionality under real conditions. Although time-intensive, this process was essential to ensure the feature performed reliably across platforms and scenarios.

Transforming Transportation and Gig Work with Accurate Mileage Tracking

By focusing on accuracy, reliability, and user feedback, we developed and iterated on the feature to deliver real value. The solution provides critical benefits for transportation businesses and their professional drivers:

• Financial Accuracy: Precise mileage tracking enables accurate expense reporting, tax preparation, and financial planning.
• Operational Efficiency: Automated tracking reduces administrative burden and minimizes manual data entry.
• Seamless Multitasking: Trip tracking continues uninterrupted when users navigate to other parts of the app or put the app in the background to use other apps on their phone.
• Real-Time Updates: Users see up-to-date mileage and savings data, with the tracker continuing to update automatically as the trip progresses.
• Minimized Data Loss: Regular backend updates ensure critical trip data is preserved, even in cases of app crashes or device issues.
• User-Driven Improvements: A post-trip note feature allows users to document special details about their journeys, enhancing record-keeping capabilities. Additionally, users can conveniently download all trip details in CSV format, providing an easy-to-view summary and supporting efficient record-keeping.

Building for the Future

By leveraging the Capacitor Community plugin and implementing strategic data persistence and user experience enhancements, our team was able to deliver a robust mileage tracking tool that meets the unique needs of truck drivers and gig workers. This technical journey has been invaluable, demonstrating how targeted technological solutions can transform business operations in the transportation industry.

If you have any questions or would like to discuss your own custom application development needs, please don’t hesitate to reach out to the LaunchPad Lab team. We’re always eager to share our expertise and collaborate on innovative solutions.

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