Economic miles, not convenient miles.
The offer model reasons about the actual work pattern: travel to merchant, delivery leg and practical return burden.
Last-mile logistics fairness
Price the real delivery burden before asking a driver to say yes.
CHOPX / ChopExpress is built around PPEM fairness: pickup miles, delivery miles and practical return-zone burden belong in the economic picture. The current model also protects tips, preserves safe decline and keeps compliance, consent and field evidence explicit.
Sprint 5EFastAPI + React/ViteCompliance/lifecycle hardeningPre-production
Offer economics
Pickup + delivery + return-zone burden → transparent offer.
Dead-end routes have a cost.
The locked V1 $3 buffer is designed to recognize the burden of ending a delivery outside the practical work zone.
Tips do not repair weak platform pay.
The customer tip is shown separately and remains driver-owned; it is not used to disguise inadequate base economics.
Driver protections
Fairness includes consent, compliance and operational truth.
Acceptance must remain a real choice.
Accept, decline and override paths are explicit states so later review can reconstruct what was offered and how consent was captured.
Eligibility has prerequisites.
Activation/compliance logic prevents production-like actions from bypassing required driver state.
Plan for costs without pretending to hold money.
Maintenance, protection and tax-oriented reserve logic is planning/accounting support, not regulated custody or live banking.
Wait, closure and sealed-bag exceptions matter.
Locked V1 rules include the five-minute wait/store-closed/sealed-bag evidence path so field exceptions are not left to memory.
Evidence Vault
Delivery disputes should be reconstructable.
Bind events to the right driver/session.
Pickup, delivery, timing and exception events belong to an explicit field session rather than anonymous client state.
Preserve what happened.
GPS/incident/receipt/drop-off concepts support later audit and dispute resolution.
Durability still matters.
A private durable production Evidence Vault, retention policy and operational acceptance remain gates before claiming live evidence custody.
Current status
Architecture is coherent; the pilot still has to prove the economics.
FastAPI backend, React/Vite driver interface, PPEM/offer logic, tip separation, field-session routes, compliance lifecycle, driver activation and consent/override architecture exist in the controlled pilot-readiness codebase.
$3 Return-Zone Buffer, Tip Protection, Safe Decline, Consent Override, Evidence Vault, Compliance Gate and Reserve Ledger define the pilot baseline.
Provider identity, durable evidence, payment/insurance boundaries and live operational acceptance remain gated.
Real merchant/driver behavior must prove fairness, profitability, utilization and retention assumptions.