Clover Cars, a London private-hire operator that holds council transport contracts. 2023
Council transport routes, put out to bid among vetted drivers
Clover Cars, a London private-hire firm, gives its council transport routes to self-employed drivers and passenger assistants. I was the main feature developer on its Laravel portal: admins build a route from postcodes, drivers bid once all their compliance documents are on file, and the winner gets a text in one click.
- Documents on file before a driver can bid
- 7
- Most bids a driver can place on a route
- 3
- Versions of the bidding rule, May to October 2023
- 5
How the route bidding works
The problem
Council routes to hand out, and drivers to vet
The firm runs passenger transport for local councils and gives each route to a self-employed driver, sometimes with a passenger assistant on board. Every driver needs their compliance documents on file first. The portal gives the firm one place to post routes, collect bids and tell the winner.
Step one
A route, built from postcodes
I built the route builder. An admin enters a pickup, any number of via stops and a drop-off by postcode, and Calculate mileage sends each leg to the Google Distance Matrix API. The total is the sum of the legs, and the admin can still correct it by hand. A route also carries a vehicle type, a price band, an expiry time, start and end dates, a contact and the council’s terms.
Step two
No documents, no bid
I wrote the bidding rules on the server. A driver can’t bid until all 7 required documents are uploaded: PCO licences, MOT, insurance, DBS, driving licence and V5. A bid has to sit inside the route’s price band, each driver gets at most 3 bids on a route, and drivers see only their own bids and their position. A driver can name a passenger assistant, picked from those who applied to that route.
Step three
The winner hears by text
Admins see every bid, lowest first. I made telling the winner one click: Notify driver sends a TextMagic SMS, with the UK number put into +44 form, and records the time and the result on the bid. The driver and the admins get an in-app alert, and if the SMS fails, admins get one asking them to check the number. A separate console command queues one email per driver about the routes added in the last day.
Over the project
Five versions of the bidding rule, May to October 2023
How bids work changed with the client as the project went on: lower bids only in May 2023, then a minimum price in June, a cap of 3 bids per route in July, higher bids only in August and, from October, the price band. I kept the bidding rules in one service class, and each change was made there.
A teammate built the deploy pipeline and the browser tests, and later refactored the routes list I had built. A certificate check for passenger assistants was the last thing written, and it stayed on the development branch.
How it fits together
One route, start to finish
- AdminBuilds the routeFrom postcodes, with miles per leg, a price band and an expiry time
- Passenger assistantAppliesTo live routes that need an assistant
- DriverBidsOnly with all 7 documents on file, inside the band and up to 3 times, optionally naming an assistant who applied
- AdminCompares the bidsEvery bid on the route, lowest first
- AdminNotifies the winnerAn SMS, a record on the bid and in-app alerts
What each role sees
Admin
- Routes list
- Every live route
- Price on a route
- The latest bid
- Bids
- Every bid, lowest first
- Can
- Build routes and notify winners
Driver
- Routes list
- Every live route
- Price on a route
- The starting price
- Bids
- Only their own, with their position
- Can
- Bid up to 3 times a route, once all 7 documents are in
Passenger assistant
- Routes list
- Live routes that need an assistant
- Price on a route
- The assistant’s fee
- Bids
- Those where a driver named them
- Can
- Apply to a route, or withdraw
The work
Laravel
PHP
MySQL
jQuery
Bootstrap- Google Distance Matrix
- TextMagic
