PRO FI T M AT T E R S | By Becky Schultz
Telematics Enable Equipment Management Efficiency and Accurate Job Costs Telematics help Loenbro to track equipment utilization, manage maintenance and more accurately assign job costs.
L HCSS Telematics helps Loenbro make more informed decisions about its equipment fleet and equipment needs on projects.
oenbro is an industrial construction and energy services company based in Montana. It has several divisions that share equipment, and the divisions rent equipment from each other when possible instead of using a rental company to fulfill resource needs. While this is efficient and saves the company money on rental
fees, Loenbro found it wasn’t getting an accurate idea of how many hours the equipment was being used. Loenbro decided to add HCSS Telematics to its HCSS suite of products — which includes HeavyJob and Equipment360 — to help track equipment utilization, manage preventive maintenance and
accurately charge costs to each job. The solution is now active on 95% of its equipment and on-road vehicles at all times; the other 5% is equipment that has been idle for more than two weeks and is no longer part of the equipment audit. The telematics software and GPS hardware are now helping the company manage equipment across multiple states. “We’re able to provide the field engineers and project managers with the resources they need to monitor where their equipment is and where everyone else’s equipment is, and to really fully utilize our equipment,” says Joey Micheletti, equipment systems engineer at Loenbro. “If one of our field engineers or project managers is done utilizing the majority of their sidebooms and another field engineer says, ‘I could really use another one or two sidebooms,’ he has the resources to see, ‘It doesn’t look like this one is being used too much over on Frank’s job; let me call Frank.’” Because Loenbro’s jobs are spread out across the country, tracking and providing on-time maintenance on equipment was also a challenge for its shop. “During the boom out in the Bakken (Formation), we would send a piece of equipment out to a job and the mechanic never saw it for a year,” Micheletti comments. “By that time, it was far beyond its needed service.” HCSS Telematics has enabled
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Loenbro has HCSS Telematics active on nearly all of its equipment. The telematics software and GPS hardware help the company manage equipment across multiple states. the company to set up a preventive maintenance program. “Now, the GPS data feeds into Equipment360, and any of the shop managers are aware of the machine’s upcoming service and can dispatch a mechanic accordingly,” says Micheletti. Performing service on a scheduled basis has helped cut down on overall maintenance costs for the fleet.
ACCURATE JOB COSTING Assigning job costs is another headache HCSS Telematics has helped to address. Prior to the program’s implementation, project managers received a lump sum cost for equipment that they would have to split up for each job on their own. “It wasn’t as accurate as they’re able to provide the companies now, and it was not as instantaneous,” says Micheletti. “Now, if a project manager wants to know how much his job cost him last week between equipment and payroll and all that, it’s there.” Project managers input
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24 EQU IPMEN T TODAY | May 2021
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