Content

DNA

vHub

Facilitate smart trailer sharing

  • Type Web, iOS & Android Apps, API
  • Year 2019

Smart trailer sharing and repositioning community

Finloc offers various types of financing to purchase or lease trailers, trucks, heavy machinery and handling equipment. Through its operations, Finloc saw a critical situation in the semi-trailer industry: more than 2 out of 3 pieces of equipment remain unused and parked in yards.

The company therefore came up with the idea of creating its own semi-trailer sharing platform, inspired by Airbnb among others. Designed for private fleets, for-hire carriers, trailer rental companies and OEMs, vHub turns unused trailers into revenue-generating equipment while reducing trailer repositioning costs by making them available to short-term renters in a secure and trustworthy digital community.

This platform lets semi-trailer owners generate revenue by reducing empty miles while also allowing renters to meet their short-term lease needs.

Mirego was mandated to conceptualize and develop the technological platform to operate this new service, making it possible to see available semi-trailers, reserve them and use them.

Two applications rather than one

In addition to supporting Finloc with the introduction of this business model in a new market, Mirego team created two applications as part of this mandate. 

The vhubapp.com web portal, allows users to make equipment available and book it in a web interface for computers and mobiles. 

The mobile vHub application, available on iOS and Android, helps drivers with retrieval and return of equipment to the rental yards.

Ease of use

The Mirego team developed a functional and complete platform in less than 8 months, using technologies such as React.js and Elixir, in a new infrastructure context (Google Cloud, Kubernetes and Terraform). The final product energizes a more traditional industry by addressing the needs of three distinct groups of users: owners, renters and drivers.

The challenge was to develop a complex platform in a short period of time, while maintaining ease of use for a target group of users who are less familiar with the technology.

The results

vHub was immediately welcomed in the road transport market. Less than a year after its launch in Quebec, over 20,000 days of rentals have already been logged. But vHub’s ambitions go beyond the province’s borders: upcoming product updates will focus on adapting the platform for all of North America.

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