Summary
What is truck position on the customer portal?
A pin on the map in the customer portal order view, showing the vehicle that is currently carrying that order.
The pin is off by default and is controlled by one switch on each customer record.
Why was it introduced?
Portal users could already see the route and the stops, but not the truck, so they telephoned planners to ask where a load was.
Qargo already links each position ping to the orders on that vehicle, but portal users had no way to read it.
Tenants disagree on whether a position should be shared at all, so the decision is made per customer rather than once for the whole tenant.
How does it work?
A Super Admin enables Show truck location on customer portal on the customer record.
On a shared trip the truck can be at another customer’s stop while their order is on board.
Prerequisites
Portal access must already be enabled for the customer. See Giving access to Customer Portal.
The Show truck location on customer portal switch must be enabled on the customer record. It is off by default.
A telematics or FMS integration must be supplying live positions for the vehicle. The switch remains available when no integration is connected, but there is then no position to display.
Use Cases
A parcel and pallet operator whose sub-depots all use the portal stops telephoning the hub for load positions during the day.
A shipper running time-critical, live-event deliveries checks the vehicle position out of hours instead of raising an after-hours ETA call.
A freight forwarder is given position visibility only while its own goods are in transit, so nothing is revealed about the rest of the vehicle's day.
A tenant enables the switch for a selected group of customers and leaves it off for every other customer.
Terminology
Term | Definition |
Customer portal | The self-service web interface where a transport company's customers submit and track their own orders. |
Order view | The page in the customer portal showing a single order, including the map with the route and the stops. |
Position ping | A single GPS position received from a telematics or FMS integration and linked by Qargo to the orders on that vehicle. |
Transit window | The period during which a customer's own goods are on the vehicle, from departure towards their first stop until their last stop is done. |
Leg | One movement within an order. A multi-leg or part-load order has several, and only some of them may carry a given customer's goods. |
What the customer sees
Map and pin
The map itself always shows on the portal order view, with or without this feature. Only the pin and Last update are new.
Condition | Portal shows |
The switch is off | Nothing at all: no section, no message and no greyed-out control, so one customer never learns that another receives positions. |
The switch is on, before the vehicle sets off towards the first stop | No pin, and No active tracking status is shown. |
The switch is on, the goods are on board, a position is available | The pin with the Last update with the date and time of the last position, however old that position is. |
The switch is on, after the last stop is done | After the last stop the pin stays on the last position. It doesn’t disappear. |
Without a telematics or FMS integration supplying live positions, there is nothing to show on the portal.
Only the latest position is shown. There is no historical route trail, so the feature cannot be used to confirm that a driver stayed on an authorised route or made no unscheduled stops.
How the visibility window works
The pin is tied to the customer's own goods, not to the vehicle's day.
It appears when the vehicle sets off towards that customer's first stop.
Before the truck sets off, and when there’s no position at all, the map says “No active tracking”.
On a shared trip the truck can be at another customer’s stop while their order is on board.
Position age is not hidden. The pin stays visible however old the position is, with its age shown as Last update: XX ago label on the map rather than the exact date and time, and there is no staleness cutoff to configure.
🧰 There is no option to share the position all day. It is not something a tenant can switch on or off. The position is limited to the window in which that customer's order is on the vehicle, so they never see where the truck goes for the rest of the day. Inside that window a co-loaded trip can still show the truck at another customer's stop.
Turning it on
The switch Show truck location on customer portal sits in the Contacts section of the customer record, under Companies > Customers, beside the portal access and portal charges switches already there. It behaves the same way as Show charges on customer portal: it affects only that customer's portal users, and there is no tenant-wide equivalent.
For enabling many customers at once, the same field is available in the Update details bulk action on the Customers list.
The click-by-click route to the Contacts section and to the Update details bulk action is covered in Giving access to Customer Portal.
Troubleshooting
Issue | Resolution |
The customer reports seeing no map section at all | Confirm that Show truck location on customer portal is enabled on that customer record. |
The pin shows on some legs of an order but not others | Expected. The pin appears only on the legs carrying that customer's goods. |
The position looks out of date | The pin always shows the last position received, however old. |
One customer can see positions and another cannot | Check the switch on each customer record, or set it for several customers at once with the Update details bulk action. |