Vehicle Ferry Software — Lane Metres, Tonnage, and the Real Vehicle Deck
Above the fold: Vehicle ferry software for RoRo and RoPax operators — lane metres, tonnage, height limits, hazmat class, EV-spaces, and trailers all modelled the way the deck actually loads. Kiosk POS at the wharf, QR scanning at the gangway, live manifest from the wheelhouse to the office. Built by operators who got tired of running their systems instead of running their business.
The real problem with vehicle-deck software
The kiosk queue is twelve deep when the 09:30 sailing is supposed to load. A 12-metre tipper rolls up that the system booked as "1 truck". A motorbike rider arrives expecting the under-cover deck — already full of 4-metre vans. A car with a caravan behind it pulls in; the booking covers the car, the caravan is "we'll sort it at the wharf". The manifest on the deck supervisor's clipboard is three sales out of date because the office hasn't reconciled the POS yet.
The vehicle deck is not a row of "spaces". It is lane metres consumed by vehicles of different lengths, tonnage spread across decks rated for different loads, height clearance that differs under cover versus open, hazmat class restrictions that govern where dangerous-goods loads can be carried, and EV-equipped berths that some routes need to track separately. Trailers and caravans are their own bookable entities — a car towing a 6-metre van consumes the car's lane metres plus the van's lane metres, and arrives on its own ticket.
A booking system that treats the vehicle deck as a flat seat count is just a payment form. It works for a 50-foot passenger launch with two product types. It does not work for a RoRo with three decks and seven vehicle classes. Peak-season queueing at the wharf is the symptom; software that cannot model the deck is the cause. (The hidden economics of ferry operations →)
Two modes on one platform — pick what you need
JetSetGo handles two booking shapes for vehicle ferries — walk-up at the wharf and advance booking through the website — on one shared vehicle deck inventory. Most operators run both.
Walk-up at the wharf. First-come-first-served vehicle queue, a kiosk that sells tickets while the next vessel is loading. Kiosk POS, concession-card recognition at the till, cash and card. The driver pulls up, the operator picks the vehicle class, lane-metre allocation runs in the background, the ticket prints in seconds.
Advance booking through the website. Vehicle slots reserved weeks ahead, peak-season capacity managed across direct and third-party channels, channel rules that protect vehicle deck space for direct bookings, dynamic pricing where the operator chooses to use it. The deck inventory updates in real time, the manifest reflects the booking before the driver leaves home.
A short-route community ferry might run pure walk-up. A high-demand holiday route might require every vehicle to book ahead. An island ferry might let residents walk up and require visiting vehicles and freight to book ahead so peak weekends do not jam. A peak-season operator might run all-advance in summer and switch to walk-up in the shoulder season. All four are JetSetGo configurations on the same shared vehicle deck inventory.
Operational tooling — built for the wharf, not the office
These capabilities work regardless of whether you take advance bookings.
Mobile POS at the wharf — kiosk hardware on the loading lane, a tablet in the booth, card payments via Stripe Terminal. A driver pulls up, the operator picks the vehicle class, lane-metre allocation runs in the background, the ticket prints in seconds. No double-entry into a separate manifest after the fact.
QR ticket scanning at the gangway, with cryptographic validation. A screenshot of a paper ticket from a previous sailing fails the scan. Boarding-state tracking moves each vehicle through Expected → Checked-in → Boarded, so the deck supervisor's tablet matches the wheelhouse's manifest matches the office's report.
Live manifest visible to crew and office at the same time. A walk-up vehicle paid at the kiosk shows on the deck supervisor's tablet the moment the card clears. A no-show triggers re-allocation. A 4.5-metre car that arrives as a 6-metre car-with-roof-rack updates the lane-metre count on the deck immediately. Reconciliation at end of shift becomes confirmation, not detective work.
Customer database that builds itself with every transaction. Every walk-up sale captures a vehicle, a driver, a contact. The operator owns the list. For council ferries that have run on cash and paper tickets for thirty years, this is the first first-party customer record — useful for resident-card renewals, storm-cancellation comms, freight-customer follow-up, and showing the council exactly who uses the service.
Weather and tide cancellation comms automatically. When a sailing is cancelled, SMS and email go out to every ticket holder with a refund-or-rebook link in the same message. The office stops being the call centre at 06:00 on a stormy Tuesday.
Audit-grade reporting. Every ticket, payment, modification, refund, boarding scan, and concession-card lookup logged with timestamp, vessel, skipper, and payment trail. Useful when the council asks for a probity-grade audit, when the maritime authority asks for a manifest, when an insurance claim depends on showing exactly which vehicle and driver were on board.
Sophisticated vehicle deck inventory — the heart of vehicle ferry software
For operators who take advance bookings, the inventory model is built around what the deck actually does.
JetSetGo is tailored to your operation. You configure the inventory dimensions that matter on your deck — and how each vehicle type consumes them. The examples below are the dimensions that come up most often in vehicle-ferry operations; your configuration might use some, all, or none of them, alongside others specific to your route, vessel, or regulator. The platform allocates against your rules in real time as bookings come in.
Capacity is hierarchical. A vessel breaks down into a passenger lounge — premium, standard, standing — and a vehicle deck. The vehicle deck breaks down further: an under-cover area with height-restricted car spaces and motorcycle spaces; an open area with truck spaces and car overflow. Each level has its own constraints, checked when a booking comes in.
Lane metres as a typical unit of capacity. A 4.5-metre car consumes 4.5 lane metres. A 12-metre semi-trailer consumes 12 lane metres. A 6.2-metre motorhome consumes 6.2 lane metres. The platform allocates by lane metre in real time — no more "the deck is full at 30 cars but we could have fit two more". Vehicle length is the truth where lane metres are the constraint. Operators that prefer "vehicle spaces" or a per-vehicle-class allocation can configure that instead; the dimension is whatever your deck actually constrains on.
Tonnage tracked when it matters. On vessels with weight-rated decks, tonnage can be a separate inventory track. A truck consumes both lane metres and tonnage; a passenger car consumes lane metres only. When the deck approaches its tonnage rating, further heavy vehicles are blocked even if lane metres remain. Configure it where it applies — ageing mixed-rated decks, RoRo configurations where one deck is HGV-rated and another is cars-only, or wherever else your stability calculations require it.
Height limit as a per-deck constraint. The under-cover deck might be 2.1 metres clear; the open deck has no overhead. A 3.5-metre tall van cannot be allocated to under-cover regardless of lane-metre availability. The booking flow checks height before confirming the spot — not at the wharf. As with the other dimensions, operators with no height-restricted areas leave this dimension switched off.
Vehicle catalogue with 96,000+ vehicles. Customers select make / model / year / body type and the platform looks up length, width, height, weight, and EV flag. Lane-metre allocation, tonnage check, and height check all run against real dimensions, not guessed measurements. For trucks, buses, and custom builds outside the catalogue, operators maintain a per-tenant list. Attachments (bullbars, roof racks, kayaks) extend parent dimensions.
EV-spaces as an independent dimension. Routes with charging-equipped berths, deck-side EV restrictions, or insurance requirements around lithium-battery loads can model EV spaces separately from regular car spaces. An EV car consumes one car space AND one EV space — without forcing the operator to invent a hybrid vehicle class.
Towed vehicles and trailers as linked entities. A car towing a caravan is a car AND a caravan — two separate entities that the platform knows are attached. They book on one transaction, they load together, they sail together, they're allocated adjacent slots on the deck. But each is recorded as its own entity for reporting, marketing, capacity calculations, and the restrictions that apply specifically to towing combinations (limited manoeuvrability ruling them out of tight loading lanes, length-plus-trailer caps on certain decks, separate hazmat declarations for the towed unit). A B-double truck with two trailers is three linked entities. Operators set the rules for each combination.
Hazmat and dangerous-goods class. Decks can be flagged to allow or exclude specific hazmat classes — flammable liquids on the open deck only, no explosives at all, restricted-quantity exceptions for tradesman vehicles. The booking flow asks the right declaration question and the deck allocation respects the class restriction.
Vehicle class restrictions per deck. Motorbikes cannot share the open-truck deck on most operators' vessels — a rule the platform enforces structurally, regardless of how much capacity remains. Configure whichever vehicle-class restrictions your deck actually requires.
Built-in channel rules. Cap how much vehicle deck capacity OTAs can sell. Reserve a portion of the under-cover deck for resident-card holders, released 24 hours before departure if unsold. Hold a freight-customer allocation across every sailing. All synchronised in real time. No double-booking is physically possible.
Pricing and business rules — built for vehicles
Pricing is highly configurable per service, per route, or per vehicle class. A car can be a flat rate, or priced by the lane metres it consumes, or by a combination. A truck can be priced by lane metres and tonnage together. A RoPax cabin can be priced per berth, per night, or as a flat per-cabin rate. The operator picks which dimensions matter for each entity, and the platform meters them.
Flat pricing — fixed rate per fare type and per vehicle type. Adult $35, child $18, car $85, motorbike $35, truck $260. Works for council ferries and short-route operators who prefer simple tariffs.
Consumption-based pricing — priced by what is actually consumed. Trucks priced per lane metre, so a 12-metre semi-trailer pays more than a 6-metre rigid. Cabins priced by berth count on RoPax overnight runs. Cabins priced per night on multi-night sailings. Freight priced by tonnage on cargo-passenger hybrids. Multi-stop services priced per route sector.
Versioned price lists with peak / off-peak / shoulder tiers switch automatically by date. Summer rates, winter rates, school-holiday rates, weekday vs weekend. Set them once; the right tier applies on the right day.
Business rules engine — visual rule builder for the rules that don't fit a flat tariff: resident concession on production of an Island Resident card; 10% off when booking more than 30 days ahead; weekend surcharge above 80% capacity; hazmat surcharge for dangerous-goods loads; trade-account discount for repeat freight customers. Rules apply automatically at the point of sale.
One inventory, every channel
Website, mobile POS at the wharf, agent portal for freight and travel agents, API integrations with downstream logistics systems, OTA connectors for foot-passenger capacity on RoPax, phone bookings logged by reservations — all drawing from one vehicle deck inventory pool, all respecting the channel rules the operator sets, all updated in the same second. The 11:00 sailing fills up at the wharf kiosk; the website's "two vehicle spaces remaining" indicator updates before the next online customer clicks Book. Vehicle deck capacity managed across six channels with different rules, different price tiers, and different vehicle-class restrictions is what makes peak season survivable.
What this looks like for real vehicle ferry operators
A council-contracted vehicle ferry on a high-demand island route. Residents walk up at the wharf with their resident-card concession. Visiting vehicles and freight have to book ahead online so peak weekends do not jam — non-resident vehicles are blocked from same-day walk-up during summer. Audit-grade reporting filed monthly to the contract manager. Vehicle deck modelled by lane metres, tonnage, and height — so the under-cover deck refuses the 3.5-metre removalist truck before it joins the queue.
A short-route community ferry running every twenty minutes across an estuary. Pure walk-up — no website booking, no peak pricing, no channel rules. Kiosk POS at the wharf, concession recognition for residents and pensioners, QR ticket at the gate. Customer database builds from every transaction; weather cancellation comms go out automatically when the captain calls a closure.
A tourist car ferry that runs both modes by season. All-advance booking through the website during the summer peak with channel rules capping third-party reseller capacity. In the shoulder season the operator switches to walk-up only at the kiosk with peak-pricing tiers turned off. Same platform, same vehicle deck inventory; the operator changes the configuration not the system.
A cargo + passenger ferry on a remote-route service to an offshore community. Trucks priced per lane metre. Tonnage rated per deck. Hazmat classes modelled — flammable liquids on the open deck only, no explosives at all. Freight customers booked through an agent portal with reserved capacity per sailing.
A RoRo with hazmat services on a regional route. Lane-metre allocation for mixed-class vehicles, tonnage caps per deck, dangerous-goods classification at the point of booking. Trailers booked as separate entities from their towing units. Trade-account pricing for repeat freight customers via the agent portal. (How small ferry operators can increase revenue through dynamic pricing →)
Frequently asked
Do you handle hazmat and dangerous goods? Yes. Hazmat class is modelled at the vehicle level and acceptance rules are configured per deck. Operators can restrict specific classes to specific decks, exclude classes entirely, or apply surcharges to dangerous-goods loads. The booking flow asks the right declaration question and the deck allocation respects the class restriction structurally.
How do trailers and towed vehicles work? A trailer is a separate booked entity, not an extension of the towing vehicle. A car towing a caravan books the car plus the caravan, each with its own lane metres, on its own ticket. A truck with two trailers is three entities. Operators set the towing relationship in the booking flow; the platform allocates each entity independently. A 5-metre car + 6-metre caravan combination consumes 11 lane metres on the deck — accurately.
Can I model height-limited under-cover decks separately from open decks? Yes. Each deck — and each sub-area within a deck — carries its own height limit, tonnage rating, and lane-metre capacity. A 3.5-metre van will not be allocated to under-cover regardless of how much lane-metre capacity remains. Motorbikes can be structurally forbidden from the open-truck deck. The booking confirms before the customer arrives — not at the wharf.
Can drivers just walk up at the wharf without booking? Yes. Kiosk POS at the wharf is a core capability, not an afterthought. An operator can run a wholly walk-up vehicle ferry with no advance booking enabled and still get full lane-metre tracking, QR tickets, live manifest, customer database, weather comms, and audit reporting.
Does the audit reporting satisfy a council contract? The audit trail captures every ticket, payment, modification, refund, concession-card lookup, and boarding scan with timestamp, vessel, skipper, and payment-trail attribution. Whether that satisfies a specific council contract depends on the contract — we have built the reporting depth for operators where probity-grade audit is a contract condition, and council operators use it as their primary reporting tool.
What about EV charging and EV-equipped berths on the deck? EV-spaces are tracked as a separate inventory unit. A car flagged as electric consumes one car space AND one EV space. Operators with limited charge points — or routes where EV registration data is required for insurance — model the EV capacity independently. The platform does not run the charging hardware; it models the bookable capacity the hardware can support.
Run your vehicle ferry the way the deck actually loads
The vehicle deck, the lane metres, the tonnage, the height limit, the hazmat class, the trailers, the EV-spaces, the kiosk, the manifest, the resident concession, the audit report — all on one platform, with one inventory pool.
Cancel anytime. You own your data.
See also: ferry booking system (the parent pillar covering passenger lounges, peak-season channel control, and the full ferry-operations picture) — multi-modal booking platform (when you sell ferry + tour + accommodation as one package) — tour operator software (the sister pillar for the touring side of your business).