I still can't believe what I have been able to build using Replit Agent.
6 months ago this would have been impossible.
First off, a little background: At the end of 2024, I acquired Don Norman Associates (DNA). At DNA we have the largest collection of motor carrier authority letters in the world. Some stretch as far back as the 1930s.
The system that currently hosts those files was written in ColdFusion back in the early 2000s. The retrieval is fast, but cumbersome. We are working on a new system that allows for self-service retrieval and has broader metadata from each mc letter.
Well, while we're building a more "production-ready" system, I decided to vibe code a new web app with a subset of the documents we have. I started off small and just kept iterating and iterating.
Now I have a fully functioning web store that has indexed and archived 1.1MM motor carrier letters issued by FMCSA. Basically every MC letter issued from 2011-now.
Documents are indexed with company name, city, state, DOT Number, MC Number, type of authority granted, etc, and instantly searchable.
So far beyond a prototype. It's making money and making our service delivery quicker and fully featured. Abandoned carts, discount codes, search analytics, cron jobs, etc.
Now we just need to work on driving more traffic to the site.
I cannot wait to see what gifts Replit delivers in the next year!
Also, late last week I got sick of wondering if/when MOTUS was last updated, so I built a small service to log when it was last updated.
over the weekend the server was bumped 3 minor versions! and 4 database migrations! WAHOO!
https://t.co/17sodVcFZ5
ok, some stats are now in from MOTUS data.
I took a quick peek at them - carrier apps still seem to be rolling in with a steady pace ~4k in the last 4 weeks.
i think it's misleading (not saying intentionally so). MOTUS is absolutely broken, but it's not like people aren't going through at all.
We are just about to the 21 day mark, which will be interesting to see if any of those new authority applications get granted.
Unfortunately, with broken datasets, that's making things a bit more challenging.
quick update: sounds like FMCSA is "close" to a patch to solve some issues including the carrier's identity - maybe later today or soon.
Not sure if MOTUS will go offline while this patch applied.
@supertrucker@freightcaviar i don't think anything's past the 21 day window yet, but DOT numbers definitely are. ~hundreds/day are being issued from a quick eyeball