Porter Haulage now has total visibility of their fleet and the data intelligence to increase operational efficiencies. Optimised vehicle servicing and simplified RUC compliance are also saving the business time and money.
A family business founded in 1945, The Porter Group is today one of Australasia’s largest privately owned industry entities, with eight business units and 50 retail locations in New Zealand, Australia, and California. From equipment sales and rentals to parts, servicing, and financing, they provide the heavy machinery needed in construction, roading, forestry, mining, and agricultural and industrial applications.
Porter Haulage is the division that transports the machinery from A to B. Four years ago, they moved to EROAD telematics seeking fleetwide visibility: “We wanted to know where our loads were and that they were being delivered to the right places at the right times,” says Group Asset Manager Ken Reilly.
With apps that facilitate pre-trip inspections, defect logging, and scheduled maintenance, EROAD has helped Porter Haulage minimise fleet downtime while increasing their transparency: “Delivery times, pickup times – it’s easy to take a screen shot and send it to the customer if they’re disputing where we might have been.”
EROAD telematics are also useful in verifying reports of risky driver behaviour, allowing safety managers to take the necessary corrective steps if there has been a breach or furnish exonerating proof, including location, speed, date, and time.
“From the transporter itself to the equipment on the back going to the customer, to traffic management and curfew hours, EROAD is the cornerstone of that management. Pretty much everything is leveraged around that one platform now.”
Because everything is on one platform, everyone is on the same page – wherever they are. Not only that, but the MyEROAD administrative platform offers fleet managers a rich repository of near-real-time data that enables business analysis and opportunities.
“From how long our brakes have lasted to fuel burn per kilometre, to how many kilometres each configuration of truck and trailer has actually been able to achieve, you can benchmark what you should expect – month in, month out.”
By extension, this sheds light on possible areas for improvement: “Where are we falling down? Is it load times? Is it start times? You can make sound decisions about your fleet based on fuel consumption, driver performance, or even how the asset is performing.”
A monthly report using key data pulled from EROAD gives the business operational insights as well as granularity: “It breaks down what it’s cost us to run per kilometre, including which operator performed which tasks and when.”
But the benefits felt most keenly on a daily basis come from features for vehicle maintenance, automated RUC compliance, and the easy recovery of off-road mileage, all of which were extremely labour intensive before EROAD. Furthermore, EROAD’s Day Logbook helps ensure that their drivers are not overworked: “The paperless logbooks allowed us to manage driver hours directly through payroll from EROAD – and helped us do our best to ensure everyone’s safety.”
Before EROAD, workshop technicians had to spend time gathering information before they could take action, which sometimes led to backlogs. “Now that’s taken care of. The information is presented on a platter for them to accurately say, ‘You’ve got 5000km left on these tyres.’ If you’re driving something worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, you don’t want it stopped on the side of the road for something that could have been prevented.”
Porter Hire, the company’s equipment rental division, and their subcontractors can access shared EROAD data, and certain data can be made available to customers as well: “We provide clients a portal so they can look into their own data about the things of interest to them,” says Ken. “It also helps the customer be aware of staff driver performance and location management.”
While the current suite of EROAD products offers The Porter Group huge benefits today, they’re already thinking about tomorrow: “We want to be seen as market leaders, not followers, and the products EROAD has in the pipeline are very exciting. We see the value of their progression and how being part of that journey will help the Porter Group grow.”
Though they knew EROAD was a good product from the outset, its strength and potential exceeded their expectations: “The more we used EROAD, the more we learned, the more excited we became and the more buy-in grew – from the workshop management to the haulage and hire management and now even senior management.”
Of MyEROAD’s recent Power BI upgrade and entry into business intelligence, he says, “Anything that streamlines accurate reporting will be well-received. We’re probably EROAD newbies compared to a lot of companies, but we are growing as they grow. We’re very happy.”
