LIC significantly reduced costs and improved driver behaviour

Business Need

Livestock Improvements Corporation (LIC) is a New Zealand farmer-owned cooperative. For more than 100 years, LIC has provided genetics expertise, information, and technology to the dairy sector, aimed at improving the prosperity and productivity of farmers.

The Herd Test division includes around 100 field technicians based in 13 locations spread between Kaitaia and Invercargill. This team travels over 3.2 million km per year, a lot of it on rural roads visiting farms.

Each milking season, LIC retains about 80% of its drivers. Despite a focus on wellbeing, the cooperative was struggling with buy-in by all drivers around safety and vehicle care. This resulted in increased vehicle wear and tear, a significant cost to LIC.

Solution

Brent Wollaston, National Herd Testing Manager at LIC, implemented EROAD to address five critical areas of fleet operations:

Automating RUC. EROAD’s solution automates RUC purchasing and display for LIC and means they can claim for all km’s travelled off public roads. “Previous to EROAD, RUC was my biggest headache, now that it’s automatic I look at it about once a month.”, Jason Karauti, National Fleet Manager
Preventing speeding and incident events. The Ehubo2: driver-facing device enables real-time driver feedback and behaviour reporting including acceleration, braking, cornering, and speeding alerts. Previously, drivers received a report on their bad driving after the fact. The EROAD system eliminated awkward conversations for Jason and saw a significant decrease in speeding incidents and vehicle wear and tear.
Inspiring drivers to own their behaviour and improve their driving. LIC instigated a Herd Test Driver of the Year Awards programme: Leaderboard-style reporting drove competition around driver safety and vehicle health. Cash incentives and trophies for Driver of the Year and Runner Up, Most Improved and Runner Up.
Superfluous fleet maintenance. EROAD Inspect increased transparency around compliance, ensuring drivers completed regular safety checks. The app facilitates weekly electronic vehicle inspections and weekly scheduled reporting to all parties on speed, idling, e-inspections, and vehicle health and use.
Enhance visibility of the fleet. Jason manages the national fleet from Hamilton, previously relying on drivers has been a challenge. EROAD gives him a snapshot overview of where the vehicles are, who is driving and their average speeds. ”It makes my job ten times easier”, he says.

Customer Benefits

Since implementation, LIC has experienced the following improvements

$4000

Rebate

90%

Fewer Speeding events

4%

Fuel saving

20%

Reduced Maintenance costs

Over 90% reduction in speeding events compared to old telematics system, down to 0.25 per 100 km travelled. “Zero speed infringements for the entire herd testing fleet for the entire 2019 season, never before achieved”, Jason Karauti.
“Switching to eRUC with EROAD means we can automatically claim rebates for every km travelled off a public road, we recently claimed an excess of $4000, which would have been otherwise lost.” – Brent Wollaston, National Herd Test Manager.
Significantly increased driver buy-in: numerous examples of poor performers moving to and maintaining 5-star driver status. “One of our drivers was constantly speeding; after we installed EROAD he moved from a two-star driver to a five-star driver within a month, I take my hat off to him.” – Jason Karauti.
20% reduction in service and maintenance wear and tear, “Our vehicle wear and tear used to cost us thousands, now they are standard, I believe that comes down to a change in driver behaviour.” – Jason Karauti.
Fuel savings estimated at 4%, again brought down to a change in driver behaviour.