Case study — Unit economics
The fleet was profitable.
Nobody could say which trips were.
Neither operator was flying blind at the top. Both knew the month’s revenue and both knew the month’s cost. What neither could produce was the same arithmetic one level down — for a trip, for a vehicle, for a driver — which is the only level at which anything can actually be fixed.
Before
An average, arriving late.
Revenue came from the invoice file, diesel from the card statement, advances and batta from a cash book, maintenance from whenever the workshop billed. Each of those closes on its own calendar, and none of them carries a trip number. Joining them by hand for one month is a week’s work; joining them for one trip is not worth anybody’s afternoon, so it never happened.
What that leaves is a fleet average, and a fleet average is where a loss-making corridor goes to hide. A route running below cost and a route running well above it produce a perfectly healthy mean — and the mean is what gets quoted to the next customer.
After
The trip carries its own arithmetic.
The trip is the unit everything attaches to. Freight billed, diesel drawn, driver expenses entered on the road, tolls, detention, and maintenance apportioned against the vehicle that incurred it — all of it lands against the trip while the trip is open, not weeks later against a month.
Once that holds, per-trip margin is not a calculation anyone has to run. It is a property of the record, and per-vehicle and per-driver economics are the same numbers grouped differently: this corridor against that one, this vehicle against its own history, this driver against the same route last quarter.
This one is earned, not installed. Unit economics are only as good as the discipline of entering the cost where it happens — which is exactly why the app puts that entry in the hands of the person already standing there.
What consistent use buys, and what it asks for
Three units, three different questions
The same record, grouped three ways.
01
Per trip
Did this load pay for itself? The answer arrives while the corridor is still being run and the rate can still be renegotiated — not in a review of a quarter that is already spent.
02
Per vehicle
Which asset earns and which one only appears to. Compared against its own history rather than against a fleet mean, a vehicle’s costs turn into a maintenance decision or a replacement decision with a date attached.
03
Per driver
Mileage, expense pattern and time on the same corridor. Held against the driver’s own record on that route, it separates a training conversation from a mechanical fault — and settles arguments that would otherwise run on opinion.
How the record closes each day →
Where the cost side starts: driver expenses against the trip →
Your fleet, your numbers
Bring one corridor. We’ll price it.
More customers
All case studies →Receipts arrived a week late, attached to nothing.
Driver spend that was never mapped to a trip or a delivery, approved from a recollection of a date. Inaccurate in a way that quietly moved money, and impossible to audit after the fact.
Two fleets →Sixty tippers, four ledgers, and a month-end that took eleven days.
Aggregate and cement on short legs around Bengaluru — twelve to sixteen trips a vehicle a day, reconciled from four records that never agreed.
SaiRam Fleet Operations →