Two-sided marketplace built from scratch — 70,000+ lines across 47 handler modules. Passkey sign-in over WebAuthn, geocoded load and backload matching, two-sided ratings, a carrier document vault with expiry reminders, 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. The brief was a load board that works for people using a phone one-handed in a yard: quick to get into, matching work by real distance rather than by how a town is spelled, and able to plug into the systems a business already runs.
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 a shipper can see a carrier’s operator licence and insurance, with their expiry dates, before choosing who moves the load.
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. Typing a password on a phone there is slow, and a forgotten one is a lost session. Laydn adds passkeys over WebAuthn — face or fingerprint on the device the driver is already holding, with nothing to type and nothing phishable. The passkey sits alongside the password rather than replacing it, so losing a phone never locks anyone out.
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 a carrier document vault: operator licence and insurance certificates are uploaded with their expiry dates, a carrier cannot express interest in a load until the required ones are in date, and a daily job sends reminders before anything runs out. Shippers see the documents as uploaded when they choose who moves their load.
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 near where your current load drops — which is the feature that turns an empty leg into revenue.
Nobody refreshes a load board all day. Carriers save a Laydr alert — a postcode, a distance, a vehicle and the hours they want work — and every new load is matched against those alerts the moment it is posted. Each carrier chooses whether to hear straight away or in a digest, in-app and via web push, so a matching load reaches the right phone without anyone sitting at a laptop.
Laydn ships a public REST API with issued keys, request logging and published documentation, so a shipper's own system can post loads, see who is interested, and award and complete jobs without anybody 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 70,000 lines of first-party code across 47 handler modules and 17 purpose-built database tables — passkey sign-in over WebAuthn alongside passwords, geocoded load and backload matching with a coordinate cache, load lifecycle and expiry handling, two-sided ratings, a carrier document vault with daily expiry reminders, saved load alerts matched as each load is posted, 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, a carrier document vault with expiry reminders, saved load alerts with push notifications, a public REST API, and passkey sign-in.
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 lets someone sign in with the biometric or PIN already on their device — face, fingerprint or device unlock — using the WebAuthn standard. There is nothing to type, nothing to forget, and nothing that can be phished or reused from a breach elsewhere. On Laydn the passkey sits alongside the password rather than replacing it, so people working away from a desk get a quick way in and nobody is locked out by a lost phone.
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 near where the driver's current load drops.
Ratings in both directions, so reputation matters to both sides, plus documents both sides can see. On Laydn, carriers upload their operator licence and insurance with expiry dates, cannot express interest in a load until the required ones are in date, and get reminders before they run out. Shippers see those documents as uploaded when choosing a carrier, so the decision about who moves the load stays with them.
Scoped and priced individually — a two-sided marketplace with an API, a document vault 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, run by Laydn Ltd and founded by Martin Kenyon, who also runs 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.
