Blog
Practical writing on winter service documentation, self-hosting, and the design decisions inside Wintertrace. No marketing posts. No algorithm-chasing. Things that someone running winter service might actually want to read.
Industry
You have a truck, a full-time job, and a neighbour willing to pay you to clear their driveway. Here is what it takes to do winter service on the side legally in Canada — registration, tax, GST/HST, insurance and workers' comp, province by province.
Industry
What winter really looks like across Canada — from mild, rainy Vancouver to the Prairie deep-freeze and St. John's snow — and why the rules that govern snow clearing are municipal, not national.
Release notes
You can now test Wintertrace the honest way: request a demo, confirm your email, and run your own real installation free for 48 hours. Here is how it works, and why I built it.
Seasonal
Mid-July is the unglamorous but ideal moment to trial winter service software — time to test it live, train drivers, and decide calmly before the first snow falls.
Industry
Wintertrace now has a Klingon language pack, alongside French and Czech. A look at why open source ships things no one would ever put up for sale.
Release notes
The Documents module for Wintertrace has shipped — and getting online signing right meant building a separate signing engine, NoSign, from scratch. The story of how a simple module spiralled, and what an operator actually gets out of it.
Release notes
A new Wintertrace module sends winter-service notifications over Telegram — to drivers, customers, and admins. Consent first, no instant send, and a building block other modules can use.
Release notes
A new Wintertrace module, currently in development: store and assign customer contracts, and have them signed online — with an audit record and a privacy design that deletes the document once everyone has signed.
Compliance background
What goes into a Wintertrace service proof — and why an audit-trailed record of a winter operation is harder to dispute than a written log.
Industry
The story behind Wintertrace: a colleague asked for GPS-backed proof on his side job, and it grew into open-source winter service software built in the open.
The early articles are already mapped out. They cover the practical questions operators tend to ask once they start looking under the hood.
Setting up OwnTracks for winter service
A practical walkthrough — phone, QR code, the first driver shift.
Self-hosting Wintertrace on a 5-euro shared host
A walkthrough of a real install on a low-end PHP host.
Why we sign updates with Ed25519
A short explanation of the threat model and what the signature does not protect against.
Anonymisation and retention in winter service data
GPS tracks, customer photos, driver identifiers — what to keep, what to drop, when.
If there is a question you would want answered properly — about documentation, evidence quality, self-hosting, or anything adjacent — let us know. The early articles will follow the actual questions operators are asking.
Wintertrace is early and shaped by real winter service work. Share your feedback →