為現有的貨運業務打造軟件

I didn't come to software from a computer science program. I came to it from a dispatch desk.

In 2012 I started working as a dispatcher for my father's trucking business in Miami. I grew up around trucks, so the work wasn't new to me, but sitting in the dispatcher's chair showed me how much of trucking runs on phone calls, spreadsheets, sticky notes and memory. When something slipped, a load, a maintenance date, a compliance deadline, it usually slipped because the information lived in somebody's head.

In 2014 I founded MorPro and bought our first truck. As the fleet grew, I kept running into the same wall: the tools I could buy were built for big carriers or for brokers, not for a small operation where one person dispatches, tracks maintenance and keeps the paperwork straight. So I started building what we needed ourselves, years before "AI" was something every startup put on its homepage.

What building for your own operation teaches you

You find out fast what actually matters. When the software you write is the software your trucks depend on tomorrow morning, there is no room for features that look good in a demo and do nothing on a Tuesday.

The workflow comes first, the screen comes second. Dispatch, maintenance and compliance are connected. A truck that is overdue for service is a truck you shouldn't be dispatching. Building those pieces to talk to each other mattered more than any single screen.

Your first customer is in the building. Our flagship fleet, Pathway Transportation, runs on the MorPro platform. Every rough edge gets reported by people who need it fixed today.

Becoming a tech company

In 2022 MorPro became a full technology company and I moved from Miami to Los Angeles, where we are based today. The product is an operating system for trucking companies, owner-operators and small fleets. What's live today is dispatch and operations, fleet maintenance, compliance monitoring, and AI agents that help with operations, finance and compliance work.

If you're a developer who has been handed a messy real-world industry, my advice is simple: go sit with the people doing the work. The best spec I ever got was a week at a dispatch desk.

You can read more about my background at yamil-morales on morpro.io and about the platform at MorPro.

— Yamil Morales, Founder & CEO, MorPro Inc. (Drafted with AI assistance and published by the author.)