Couriers need ordering/tracking, dispatch system. tweak existing stuff?

[deft]

I'm another independant courier in another city struggling with the same problem indy couriers are facing in cities all over the world.  We can't take on large volumes, or accept orders online in any organized way - without the use of expensive and often clumsy ordering and tracking software.  Our larger competetors all use software we can't afford.

I know about open-source CMS systems like Mambo and PHP/Post-Nuke, etc. and am aware that plenty of adaptations exist.

I've been searching forever for a combination of modules under a CMS that would give my site the functionality it needs. 

Basically, if you took a bug-tracking system, replaced every instance of the word "Bug" with "Package", and make the Enter-Bug form use fields covering To and From addresses, priority, size/weight, etc. - and let the user fill in either with information stored in their address book - that would be what we need.

As it is I haven't found anything yet close enough to this that I could tweak it that far.  Marketing-oriented Customer Resource Managers have address books built in,  Help-Desk trouble ticket systems have the time-tracking capabilities, but we need the two hashed together.

Here's some example of the expensive systems I'm trying to emulate;

www.couriercomplete.com  (best example yet - but I wouldn't use it even if it was free.  It's "Based on .NET technology".)

www.cxtsoftware.com

www.datatrac.com  (the most commonly used, with horrible results.  very expensive.)

www.ascar.com

www.penchant.com


Any advice on where to start would be highly appreciated.  As for now I've given up on finding the magic bullet and I'm installing Mambo/Joomla and I'll see what I can make it do.

Do you think this is a good idea?  Any other suggestions?  .. Modules / Add-Ons / hacks I should look at?

[dsheppard]

There are a few helpdesk applications that are integrated:

Globodigital: http://www.globodigital.net/
Globodigital already produces several specialty editions targeting different industries. Worth contacting.

Active6 Helpdesk: http://mambo.active6.com/
Don't know if this is still actvely developed, but it's open source.

[xsor]

I spend around 1 day, but i haven't find any joomla component which give me b2b and b2c tracking system for customers orders.