Case study · Logistics

How we built an Uber-style medicine-delivery network on a lean Laravel stack

Platform Delivery · California · Shipped 2024

The challenge

A California-based startup was delivering prescription medicine directly to patients, but their driver operations ran on spreadsheets and WhatsApp. They needed a proper dispatch platform — fast, reliable, and compliant — without the cost or complexity of a full enterprise logistics stack.

The engagement came to us white-label through a US agency. We never met the end client directly. The agency owned the relationship, we owned the engineering.

Our approach

We designed a two-part system: a Laravel backend for the dispatch dashboard and admin, and a React Native app for drivers. Laravel Horizon ran the async jobs — route optimization, notification fan-out, payout processing. Redis kept real-time driver locations in memory. PostgreSQL with PostGIS handled geofenced delivery zones with real geographic primitives instead of rough lat/lng math.

The biggest decision was resisting the pull toward a bigger stack. We could have reached for Kubernetes, a dedicated dispatch service, a separate real-time layer. We didn't. Laravel + React Native + a single Postgres instance was enough to ship and scale past 100 drivers/day without a single outage.

What we shipped

• Admin dashboard for dispatchers to assign and reassign orders
• Driver mobile app (React Native) with turn-by-turn navigation, proof-of-delivery photo capture, and signature collection
• Real-time order tracking for patients via SMS links
• Geofenced drop zones with automatic arrival detection
• Automated daily payout calculation, integrated with Stripe Connect
• Compliance logging for prescription chain-of-custody
• Exception flow for late orders, missed windows, and reassignments

Results

The platform went live with a soft launch of 20 drivers and scaled to 100+ within the first quarter. Dispatch latency during peak held under three seconds. Driver onboarding dropped from three days of manual setup to four hours of self-serve. And from the day the agency handed the project to the end client, zero orders have been lost.