ELD Trip Planner
A full-stack trip routing and compliance engine that plans optimal commercial truck routes and automatically generates FMCSA Driver's Daily Log sheets with strict Hours-of-Service (HOS) enforcement.
- Logistics
- Applied AI
- Full-Stack
Context
Commercial property-carrying drivers in the United States must strictly adhere to Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) Hours-of-Service (HOS) regulations on the 70-hour / 8-day cycle.
ELD Trip Planner was engineered as a full-stack web application that takes origin, pickup, destination, and current cycle hours, plans the physical route using key-less spatial APIs, and automatically generates official FMCSA 24-hour Driver's Daily Log sheets with exact duty-status grid traces.
The problem
Long-haul truck drivers and fleet dispatchers struggle to calculate mandatory rest breaks, 10-hour off-duty resets, and fuel stops across multi-day routes while remaining compliant with overlapping HOS limits.
Manual log sheet generation is error-prone: a driver must balance 11-hour driving limits, 14-hour duty windows, 30-minute breaks after 8 hours of driving, and rolling 70-hour/8-day cycle limits. Any mathematical slip risks severe DOT regulatory penalties.
Product strategy
The strategy was to build an automated compliance engine that models federal HOS regulations as a deterministic state machine, converting spatial routing data into vector SVG FMCSA log grids without expensive commercial API keys.
Deterministic HOS enforcement
Evaluate driving limits chunk-by-chunk to guarantee 100% mathematical compliance across 11h, 14h, 30m, and 70h constraints.
Key-less spatial architecture
Utilize free, open-access spatial APIs (OSRM, Open-Meteo, US Census, OpenStreetMap) with robust fallback chains.
Official FMCSA log fidelity
Render vector SVG replicas of 24-hour paper log grids with exact traced duty lines, status totals, and daily mileage summaries.
AuraNode turns that strategy into one native workspace with a provider-neutral backend.
Automated route planning
Calculate optimal driving paths with color-coded stop markers for fuel stops (every 1,000 miles), 30-minute breaks, and 10-hour resets.
Multi-day timeline slicing
Automatically slice multi-day trip timelines into individual 24-hour daily log sheets where four duty statuses sum to exactly 24 hours.
Geocoding fallback chain
Ensure high-availability location resolution by chaining Open-Meteo, US Census, and Nominatim endpoints.
34-hour cycle restart
Automatically insert 34-hour off-duty restarts when rolling 70-hour/8-day limits would otherwise strand a driver on duty.
System architecture
A React single-page application interfaces with a Django REST API to calculate route geometry, simulate FMCSA Hours-of-Service rules, and generate multi-day vector log sheets.
React + Leaflet Interface
Interactive single-page application providing trip input forms, Leaflet route visualization with color-coded stop markers, and dynamic SVG FMCSA log grid sheets.
- React 19
- Vite
- Leaflet
- SVG
Django REST Framework
Python backend validating trip requests, orchestrating geocoding and routing provider chains, invoking the HOS simulation engine, and slicing timelines into daily logs.
- Django
- Django REST Framework
- Python
Hours-of-Service Simulation
Pure Python state machine enforcing federal FMCSA regulations (11h driving, 14h window, 30m break, 10h reset, 70h/8-day cycle, 34h restart) and outputting 24-hour log grids.
- Python
- HOS Engine
- Time Slice
Free API Provider Chain
Resolves start, pickup, and dropoff coordinates via Open-Meteo, US Census, and Nominatim fallback chain, fetching route geometry from OSRM.
- OSRM
- Open-Meteo
- US Census
- Nominatim
OpenStreetMap & Leaflet
Renders interactive vector map tiles with custom stop markers for fuel stops, 30-minute breaks, 10-hour resets, and pickup/dropoff points.
SVG FMCSA Grid Engine
Generates vector SVG replicas of official FMCSA 24-hour daily log grids with traced duty-status lines, status hour totals, and daily mileage summaries.
Vercel & Render Services
Deploys containerized Django REST services via Render (Gunicorn + WhiteNoise) and static React frontend application via Vercel.
Request lifecycle
When a user submits trip parameters (origin, pickup, destination, current cycle hours used), the React frontend dispatches a POST request to the Django REST backend. The backend resolves location coordinates across a geocoding fallback chain (Open-Meteo → US Census → Nominatim) and queries the OSRM routing server for path geometry. The route and mileage are passed to the HOS simulation engine, which evaluates federal 70-hour/8-day rules, calculates required 30-minute breaks, 10-hour resets, and fuel stops, and returns rendered SVG daily log sheets for each 24-hour timeline block.
Separation of concerns
The React frontend handles client state, interactive Leaflet map rendering, and SVG log display. The Django backend protects API communication while isolating routing, geocoding fallback logic, and HOS rule enforcement. The pure Python HOS engine acts as a standalone domain layer that chunk-evaluates driving limits and guarantees every daily log grid sums to exactly 24 hours.
Key experiences
The application unifies dispatch inputs, route maps, and regulatory log outputs in one fluid workspace.
Interactive route map
Leaflet-powered map displaying full route geometry, origin, pickup, dropoff, and color-coded rest/fuel markers.
SVG daily log sheet viewer
Renders vector SVG replicas of FMCSA 24-hour grids with traced status lines, total hours per row, and remarks for multi-day legs.
Trip summary & compliance breakdown
Provides driver timeline breakdowns, daily mileage totals, total driving vs off-duty hours, and cycle hours remaining.
Instant scenario recalculation
Re-run trip parameters with varying current cycle hours used to evaluate different dispatch scenarios instantly.
Engineering decisions
Django & DRF for domain logic resilience
Django REST Framework provides structured backend validation, serializing complex nested HOS timeline payloads.
Pure Python HOS simulation engine
Encapsulates HOS rules in pure Python, evaluating driving constraints in parallel to insert mandatory breaks and resets.
React 19 & Leaflet for map interactivity
Fast Vite-powered single-page frontend leveraging Leaflet for responsive vector map tile rendering.
Multi-provider geocoding fallback
Resilient fallback mechanism (Open-Meteo → US Census → Nominatim) eliminating single-point API failures.
Vector SVG grid rendering
Clean vector SVG generation ensures FMCSA log grids render crisp on high-DPI displays and print clean PDF pages.
Vercel & Render serverless deployment
Decoupled frontend deployment on Vercel paired with Render Gunicorn container backend hosting.
An automated FMCSA HOS compliance and routing suite.
ELD Trip Planner delivers a full-stack logistics solution combining spatial route planning with rigorous regulatory simulation.
The project is fully open-source with unit-tested HOS logic, zero commercial API requirements, and blueprint deployment configurations for Vercel and Render.
- Full FMCSA HOS rule engine (11h/14h/30m/10h/70h/34h restart enforcement)
- Interactive Leaflet map with OSRM routing and custom stop markers
- Dynamic SVG replica of official 24-hour FMCSA Driver's Daily Log grids
- Multi-provider geocoding fallback chain using free APIs
- Decoupled Django REST + React architecture deployed on Render & Vercel