Where Did the Excavator Go? Why Smart Businesses Are Learning to Track Everything

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But there’s an insidious, near-invisible profit muncher we all tend to overlook: lost gear.

A misplaced trailer. Tools stolen on another team’s job. A generator ‘borrowed’ and never returned. A pallet that disappears mysteriously between Dubbo and Brisbane. It sounds like a joke, but how many times do we see businesses lose money, not from volcanic eruptions of disaster, but from a thousand day-to-day cuts of confusion and carnage?

For tradies, transport operators and owners of big fleets, running your business is a blue-collar battle. A perpetual game of corporate chess crossed with organised chaos (and admin). Is the other compressor in Menzies, and if not, how far away is it? Who’s gone and got the skid steer? If they haven’t, where is it?

Nice of them to send the delivery to Wagga instead of here in Sydney. Oh, hang on, it went to a freight centre in Mildura instead. Why?

In a lot of ways, the day-to-day of your business seems more like the games of a clued-in game, and less like spring maps and profitability indexes.

Good Businesses Run on Less Guesswork

This is why a lot of operators are starting to rethink productivity. It isn’t about working harder. It’s about cutting down on the mess.

The companies moving forward fast are often those doing nothing new. They’re just starting to hang onto more minutes that were once spent finding gear, replacing lost assets or dealing with ridiculously avoidable delays.

Frankly, there are a lot of ways to lose money. But trying to find gear is one of the dullest of the lot. No one goes into business dreaming about calling five different blokes to see who still has the trailer keys.

Telematics Is Doing More Than Tracking Trucks

This is where this telematics gets a whole lot more interesting than many might think.

It’s not just about tracking vehicles. With the likes of asset tracking, companies can keep an eye on trailers, plant machinery, tools and high-value kit that is spread between a number of sites to help improve security, reduce downtime, and keep the show on the road.

And for businesses with operations spread around regional Australia, visibility is worth its weight in gold.

Whether you’re a truck driver hauling equipment between depots, a civil contractor managing assets across different job sites, or an agricultural contractor managing assets across vast agricultural regions, you have a common problem: you can’t use what you can’t find.

That isn’t a technology problem. At its heart, it’s a business problem. And telematics is here to save the day.

Less Chaos, More Control

Having things in the wrong place is one of those niggling frustrations. Drivers are late. Operators are stressed. Business owners buy replacement gear they already own… but can’t find.

That is not future technology. That is very present common sense. And, the Australian way means that common sense prevails. More often than not.

The Competitive Edge Might Be Simpler Than You Think

We get it. You think big moves build your business. Sometimes the way to build your business is to know where your equipment is.

Because with this knowledge at hand, you have fewer problems, you find things faster, you get jobs done faster, and your people spend more time doing stuff and less time searching for it. And for a lot of companies, the advantage doesn’t come from some big stunt. It’s gained by eliminating the small irritations everybody else is content to endure as a fact of life. Thanks to asset tracking.

And that might be one of the savvier moves you can make on the road.