Engineering · July 28, 2026 · 8 min read
Real-time shipment tracking: an architecture that survives dead zones
Tracking demos always work. Tracking in production fails in mountain passes, loading docks, and border crossings. The architecture difference is whether the system assumes connectivity or plans for its absence.
Treat position as an event stream, not a state field
Store immutable position events with device timestamps and ingest time. A single mutable 'current location' column loses the history you need to reconstruct what happened during a dispute.
Queue on the device
Driver apps should write positions and scans to a local durable queue and drain it opportunistically. Nothing the driver does should block on a network call.
Order events by device timestamp on ingest and deduplicate by event ID so replays after reconnection are harmless.
Filter at the edge
Sending a GPS ping every second is expensive and useless. Send on meaningful change: distance delta, heading change, stop start/end, geofence crossing.
Make ETA a separate service
ETA computation depends on traffic, dwell history, and hours-of-service constraints. Keeping it out of the ingest path lets you improve the model without touching telemetry.
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