Taratahi Agricultural Education Centre’s national fleet manager Ivan Allanson faces the challenge of managing a fleet spread across farms from the far north to the deep south.
For nearly 100 years Taratahi has been educating Kiwis for agricultural careers, and offers full-time courses, diploma programmes, and short courses.
The Centre has a residential campus near Masterton in the Wairarapa, with other sites in Northland, Auckland, Waikato, Bay of Plenty, Taranaki, Manawatu, Hawke’s Bay and Southland. Across New Zealand, Taratahi has 42,000 stock units of sheep, beef and deer, and it milks 2000 cows.
It runs an extensive fleet of 75 road vehicles (vans, utes, cars, a truck and a bus), plus a wide range of on-farm vehicles including quad bikes, light utility vehicles, motorbikes, tractors, trailers, and utes for farm managers.
Allanson is responsible for ensuring the fleet is safe to use, and runs as efficiently as possible. Two years ago, he installed a Teletrac Navman GPS fleet-management system to help facilitate this.
“My primary concern was safety. With a GPS system, we can track all our vehicles across the whole country. If something goes wrong, we know exactly where to send help,” Allanson says.
“I also wanted to save fuel. Our on-road fleet drives around 33,000km a week, so being fuel efficient is necessary.”
Fleet dispersion
Managing a fleet across far-flung New Zealand has its challenges.
There are GPS tracking units fitted to 68 vehicles in the on-road fleet, while some of the vans also have in-cab messaging devices.
Allanson uses the fleet-tracking software to view the whole fleet, while individual managers use the software to manage all the vehicles on their particular site.
“The software gets all the information we need on things like RUC, registration and servicing into one place,” he says .
“We have some vehicles which are driven principally on the farm, and we can claim RUC back if we can prove the vehicles were off the road. Using the Teletrac Navman system, providing this proof is very easy.”
He also uses the fleet tracking app on his iPad to keep an eye on things in the evenings, for example to arrange to service for a vehicle breakdown or if there is an accident.
Priority is safety
When educating large numbers of young people on working farms, health and safety are a top priority.
Allanson says, “With the new H&S regulations, we’re even more careful about providing a safe workplace on our farms.
“If one of our employees were consistently driving too fast, we would be liable, so with the GPS tracking system, we now monitor continuously for speeding,” he says.
“As we’re often operating vehicles in remote areas over rough terrain, we’re conscious of the risk of accidents.”
He says that if an accident occurred, “The GPS tracking system would allow us to quickly locate exactly where the vehicle was so we could send help,” and adds that “We can also use the software to see a replay of the vehicle’s behaviour in the lead-up to the accident.”
This replay would help work out what occurred, “And whether we need to change our processes to prevent future accidents.”
At-a-glance servicing and maintenance
Keeping up to date with servicing and maintenance was a headache for Taratahi, but the GPS tracking system has made that much easier.
Allanson uses the software’s dashboard functionality, which gives him an at-a-glance snapshot of things such as total kilometres per week, out-of-hours use, speeds over 105km and vehicle maintenance.
He can also easily see when the next registration or warrant is due, or where RUC usage is sitting.
“Right now I know that one vehicle that has gone past its service milestone by 3.2km,” Allanson says.
“I can also see a couple of reminders that a service is coming up within 2000km, and there are two lots of WOFs due in the next 14 days.”
He says that being able to see a snapshot of the whole fleet is a huge benefit. “It would be very time-consuming for a staff member to track it manually.”
Allanson uses data from the GPS tracking system to regularly report to the Board on the condition of the fleet. Data from the system also enables Taratahi to make future decisions about the fleet.
“We currently own all our vehicles, but using the figures from the Teletrac Navman system, we would be able to compare whether leasing a portion of them may be a better deal,” he says.
“We can also see if we need to rotate vehicles within our organisation to keep the mileage down.”
The big picture
Allanson says the main benefits for Taratahi Agricultural Education Centre are enabling regular and accurate servicing, and keeping up to date on the RUC and warranting.
“The remote management of vehicles is now so much easier, and fuel costs have also dropped,” he says.
“If you keep your speed down, you don’t use as much fuel. Servicing has become less costly, for example, as brake pads don’t wear out as quickly.
“If we find over time that a vehicle needs excessive maintenance, then we can take a detailed look at how people have been driving in it.”
Allanson says he appreciates the variety of different reports he can get out of the system.
“It’s been excellent. We can tailor it to our needs very precisely, and the ease of use is incredible.”
