Founded in 1977, Lowes Petroleum Service annually sell and deliver over one billion litres of petroleum products to regional and rural towns across Australia. Based in Goondiwindi, Queensland, Lowes Petroleum Service were looking for opportunities to increase their productivity and efficiency gains, with a solution that would fulfil those requirements.
Compliance Manager at Lowes Petroleum Service, Mr Steven Baldwin, spoke with MTData and explained how the Intelligent Access Program (IAP) and MTData’s web-based software Hawk-Eye, effectively enables him to track the locations as well as monitor the mass in his fleets.
Increasing Productivity and Moving More
To utilise higher mass limits for their fleet journeys, Lowes Petroleum Service signed up to the IAP, and the MTData Hawk-Eye solution. The IAP and the MTData system, have continually benefitted Lowes Petroleum Service since it was implemented five years ago.
Lowes Petroleum Service use the IAP through MTData’s units, in association with the IAP service provider, Transport Compliance Services (TCS), to ensure that their fleet of 14 petrol tanker vehicles remain compliant.
The in-vehicle units are used in conjunction with MTData’s Mass Management system to provide live monitoring of Gross Vehicle Mass for heavy vehicle combinations.
While using these solutions, Lowes Petroleum Service have the ability to increase their productivity, profitability gains, maintain Occupational Health and Safety (OH&S) compliance, and reduce their vehicle wastage.
“With the IAP and MTData, we have been able to move more mass and product with our vehicles and it has made a huge difference to our operations,” Mr Baldwin said.
“We do get more out of our fleet, and the ability to move more mass on the IAP approved roads is a bonus.
“Our MTData system polls down live data, which has definitely helped with maintaining our OH&S compliance.”
Improving Operational Efficiencies
The data collected from the in-vehicle units allows Lowes Petroleum Service to make informed decisions about their fleets and assists with accurately scheduling vehicle planning for the week ahead.
“We use the data to validate the routes that we use, ensuring that we can get more payload on our vehicles for delivery in certain areas,” Mr Baldwin explained.
“The data also helps us to schedule our time frames more effectively to see where our drivers are and make sure they are maintaining their compliance.
“It does help in my role as far as ensuring our vehicles are running on the correct routes, in which they can carry either concessional or heavy mass weights.
“The in-vehicle units also assist us with incident reporting, time frames of accidents, and from these units we can identify the location of the vehicle at the exact time.”
Effectively Locate Fleets through Hawk-Eye
Lowes Petroleum Service, in addition to monitoring the mass of each truck in their fleet, also utilise Hawk-Eye to track the locations of their entire fleet for health and safety purposes.
“The web access with Hawk-Eye is a lot cleaner and easier to use and our schedulers use it extensively when they are preparing for vehicle interchange,” he added.
“It has made a massive difference to coordinating our operations around scheduling time frames with drivers, and we also use it through Raptor Lite, the live tracking App on our phones.”
As a Hawk-Eye user, Lowes Petroleum Service have the ability to inform any nominated staff of delays or accidents on the roads, so drivers are not at risk.
“Hawk-Eye helps us to work around if there are deviation in the routes, or a breakdown on the roads, so we can inform our drivers ahead of time,” Mr Baldwin concluded.
MTData is proud to be the technology provider of Lowes Petroleum Service and assist them with remaining competitive in their industry.