Two-sided marketplace built from scratch — 38,000+ lines across 31 handler modules. Passkey authentication over WebAuthn, geocoded load and backload matching, two-sided ratings, automated compliance expiry checks, saved load alerts with push, and a documented REST API.
Laydn is a UK freight exchange — a load board connecting businesses that need freight moved with hauliers who have capacity to move it.
The economics of haulage turn on empty running. A lorry going home unloaded is a cost with no revenue against it, and the established exchanges have solved that with software most drivers openly dislike: passwords they cannot remember on devices they are using one-handed in a yard, matching that misses jobs twenty minutes away because a town was spelled differently, and no way to plug the thing into the transport management system they already run.
The other half of the brief was trust. A marketplace only functions if posters believe the haulier will turn up and hauliers believe they will get paid — and if operator licences and insurance are actually current, rather than something everybody assumes and nobody checks.
Every Mako Digital case study includes a complete build specification — the actual technical decisions that made the project what it is.
Every Mako Digital build follows a documented approach — consistent across every project, calibrated to each client’s industry, brand, and customer journey.
The people using this platform are in cabs, on yards and in traffic. A forgotten password is a lost session and a lost load. Laydn authenticates with passkeys over WebAuthn — face or fingerprint on the device the driver is already holding, no password to reset and nothing phishable. It is the kind of decision that sounds like a technical detail and turns out to be the reason people keep using the thing.
Freight exchange is a classic two-sided problem: posters need hauliers who turn up, hauliers need posters who pay. The build carries a ratings system running in both directions and an operator compliance document store with automated daily expiry checking, so an out-of-date insurance certificate or operator licence is caught by the platform rather than discovered after a job has gone wrong.
A load is only relevant if it is near you or near where you are heading, so search is built on geocoded coordinates with a caching layer rather than matching place-name strings. That is what makes backloads work — finding a return job on a route you are already running — which is the feature that turns an empty leg into revenue and is the single most persuasive reason for a haulier to sign up.
Nobody refreshes a load board all day. Hauliers save the routes and vehicle types they want, and scheduled jobs running every fifteen minutes match new postings against those alerts and push them out — in-app and via web push to the phone. Loads get seen minutes after posting instead of whenever somebody next opens a laptop.
Laydn ships a public REST API with issued keys, request logging and published documentation, so a haulier's existing transport management system can post and pull loads programmatically instead of somebody rekeying them. Around the core exchange sit the additional product modules — Planr, Roamr and Laydr — each built into the same codebase and the same account.
If we wouldn’t put it on our own business, we wouldn’t put it on yours.The Mako Digital Standard
Laydn Case Study: Mako Digital designed and built Laydn, a UK freight exchange and load board platform. The build delivered over 38,000 lines of first-party code across 31 handler modules and nine purpose-built database tables — passkey authentication over WebAuthn, geocoded load and backload matching with a coordinate cache, load lifecycle and expiry handling, two-sided ratings, an operator compliance document store with daily expiry checking, saved load alerts matched on a fifteen-minute cadence, in-app and web push notifications, app-shell mobile delivery, and a public REST API with issued keys, request logging and published documentation.
This is the build we point founders planning a marketplace or an industry platform at when they want to understand what it actually takes. See our custom CRM and platform development page, web design for logistics companies, or visit the case study archive for more examples.
A UK freight exchange — a load board where businesses with freight to move post loads and hauliers with capacity find them. Built from scratch by Mako Digital, it includes geocoded load matching, backload search, two-sided ratings, operator compliance checking, saved load alerts with push notifications, a public REST API, and passkey authentication.
Yes. Marketplaces are their own discipline — you are building two products at once for two audiences with opposing incentives, plus the trust layer that makes them willing to transact. Laydn is the worked example. See our custom CRM and platform development page, or the other platform builds in the case study archive.
A passkey replaces the password with the biometric or PIN already on the user's device — face, fingerprint or device unlock — using the WebAuthn standard. There is nothing to forget, nothing to reset, and nothing that can be phished or reused from a breach elsewhere. For a platform used by people working away from a desk, removing the password removes the single biggest reason they stop logging in.
Yes. Laydn ships REST endpoints with issued API keys, per-request logging and published developer documentation, so customers can integrate their own systems rather than rekeying data. If you want other businesses to build against your platform, the API needs designing as a product in its own right, not bolted on afterwards.
By geocoding to coordinates and caching the results, then matching on real distance rather than comparing place names as text. It is the difference between a load board that surfaces genuinely relevant work and one that misses a job twenty minutes away because the town was spelled differently. It is also what makes backload matching possible on a route the driver is already running.
Ratings in both directions, so reputation matters to both sides, and verification the platform enforces rather than trusts. Laydn stores operator compliance documents and runs a daily job checking for expiry, so a lapsed licence or insurance certificate is flagged automatically. Trust that depends on everyone being honest is not trust, it is hope.
Scoped and priced individually — a two-sided marketplace with an API, compliance layer and mobile delivery is months of work. The most valuable early conversation is usually about what the minimum credible version looks like, because a marketplace with no users on either side is the hardest possible product to launch. We will be honest with you about that.
Yes. Laydn is a live UK freight exchange at laydn.co.uk, built and operated within the same group as Mako Digital — so we run it as a business as well as having built it.
If Laydn is the kind of work you have in mind, these are the closest peers in our portfolio — full platforms, all built from scratch.
Marketplace platforms are scoped and priced individually. Same approach as Laydn — remove the friction that stops people logging in, build the trust layer before you need it, and design the API as a product rather than an afterthought.
