Savings made via fleet management software
Farms and farm animals wait for no one – that’s why Professional Farm Services, a Cambridge-based sales and service company, is on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Director Dave McMillan says that providing highly responsive customer service is the key to staying in business in the farm industry. And he should know: he’s been in business since 1984.
Professional Farm Services looks after dairy and dry stock farmers, lifestyle block owners, dairy factories and their farms as well as local district council town water supply facilities. The team includes technicians that install and maintain water and vacuum pumps, a full industrial electrical division, and an engineering department that do stainless steel and aluminium welding, and make on-the-spot repairs.
‘‘We run a fleet of about a dozen vehicles, mostly Ford Ranger utes and Toyota Hiace vans, but we also have three trucks including a HIAB rig so we can handle big water tanks up on the farms,’’ McMillan says.
When McMillan heard about GPS fleet tracking from Teletrac Navman, he had it installed, initially into about 10 vehicles, then across the whole fleet.
There are now tracking units in the vehicles, and messaging terminals in all the cabs. Dave and the office staff use fleet management software every day to see where all the guys and the vehicles are. Dave also uses the Teletrac Navman app on his phone.
‘‘I’m the 24/7 response person. I get the calls when an urgent job needs to be done. I can go into my phone and pull up location of the guys straight away, then send the closest person to the job. It’s fast and efficient.’’
McMillan says when the business installed GPS fleet tracking, it made savings in charged-out mileage straight away.
‘‘We saved about $125 per vehicle per month, which is a very significant sum of money. Before the installation, the guys would leave the shop, go to a farm, go to another farm and back to the shop. They would guess the mileage at about 20km, but that was way under.
‘‘Now we know the mileage exactly, and can apportion it correctly to the right client. Each day we print out the mileage reports. When the guys arrive they sit down and charge out all the mileage to clients each day, so we’re always on top of it.’’