The commercial arm of johnsonfarms.us

Software with dirt under its fingernails.

We're a small software shop in wheat-country Washington. We've farmed, towed, and turned wrenches for a living, and now we build the software we always wished those jobs had. All of it is open source. If you'd rather not run it yourself, we'll set it up, host it, and pick up the phone when something breaks.

01Built in the open

Everything we release is free software under the GNU AGPL, with the source on GitHub. You can run any of it yourself without paying us a dime, and plenty of people should.

02Run for you

Most businesses don't want to deal with servers, and they shouldn't have to. We'll install your system, host it, keep it updated and backed up, and be the ones you call when something's off.

03Field-tested first

We only sell what we already use. Everything on this page was built for our own work first and had to prove itself there before we'd ask anyone to pay for it.

Product № 001 · Available now

TIM Dispatch

Towing & Impound Management — one system for the dispatch desk, the impound lot, and the billing that follows both. (Around the shop, we just call him Tim.)

Live dispatch board

Every call on one board, updated live on every screen in the office. Assign a driver and it's on their phone.

Quick capture

Take a call, type in the pickup, and quote a real price while the customer is still on the line.

Impound management

Track every vehicle on the lot, what it owes, and when it can release — with the fee schedule your state requires.

Invoicing & AR

Send invoices one at a time or in batches, keep account statements straight, and see who's behind at a glance.

Driver app

Drivers get the day's calls on their phone, with a push notification the moment a new one is assigned.

Reports

Sales tax, commissions, lot aging, AR aging — the reports your bookkeeper and your state actually ask for.

Runs anywhere

Installs with Docker on a modest server. Use Google Maps, or run entirely on OpenStreetMap with no API keys at all.

Your data, your server

Standard PostgreSQL under the hood and an AGPL license on top. If you ever want to leave, you take everything with you.

TIM runs the day-to-day at a working towing & recovery operation in Eastern Washington. It dispatches real calls and bills real accounts, every day.

TIM is the first product out of the workshop. More is in progress over at johnsonfarms.us — things show up on this page when they're ready to be stood behind.

Free if you drive it yourself.

Everything we make is licensed under the GNU AGPL. You can download it, run it, and change it without ever paying us. That's not a loss leader — it's the point of the license, and some of our favorite users will never send us a dollar.

The business is everything around the code: setup, hosting, updates, backups, and someone who answers when you call. If you've got the crew to run it yourself, go with our blessing.

Source on GitHub →

Three ways to run it

How we work

Managed

We host it, run it, and keep it updated and backed up. You log in and work. One predictable monthly bill.

Installed

Your server, our setup. We stand the system up, move your data in, document everything, and hand you the keys.

Your way

Clone it from GitHub and run it yourself, free. If you get stuck, you can buy a few hours of our time.

Pricing is simple, and we'll tell you up front. Ask and you'll have a number the same day.

From the field,
not the boardroom.

Johnson Farms is pretty much what it sounds like. We're a farm family from Lincoln County, Washington — wheat country — and over the years the work has run through the Army as a heavy-vehicle mechanic, ag equipment, wind turbines, and a towing outfit with its own dispatch desk and impound lot.

The software started because we needed it ourselves. The tools on the market were built for operations ten times our size, or priced like it, so we wrote our own. Eventually it occurred to us that other outfits are probably stuck the same way.

That's the whole pitch, really: we've done these jobs, so we know where they hurt. And since the source is open, you don't have to take our word for any of it.

Contact

Talk to a human who's done the job.

Want a demo, a price, or an honest opinion on whether our stuff fits your operation? Email us.

This opens your own mail app with everything pre-filled — nothing is sent behind your back.