Beef + Lamb NZ Ensures the Safety of Their Team in Remote Locations
The safety of their team is paramount for Beef + Lamb NZ. Since using Argus Tracking, their driving behaviour has improved and the safety of their remote workers is easy to monitor.
Beef + Lamb NZ’s drivers travel between farms in remote countryside so there was a large health and safety risk for their staff and the organisation. Argus was implemented to monitor their driver’s safety while they were out on the road and in remote locations.
As a lot of their drivers’ travel was in rural areas outside of traditional GSM cellular coverage, B+LNZ implemented Argus Tracking’s Satellite GPS units. This gave them the ability to monitor the vehicles in real-time within GSM coverage, as well as receive real-time updates from the GPS units when the vehicles were out of GSM coverage in rural areas and rugged terrain across the country. This satellite coverage has made it easy and cost-effective to monitor the safety of their team in remote locations and provides a new level of confidence to their team and their families.
SOS and Help buttons are also fitted to each vehicle, allowing the drivers to set off alerts if they get into trouble. The SOS and Help Alerts are sent through in real-time, regardless of if the vehicles were in or out of GSM coverage. These alerts are sent through to a 24-hour call center that Argus helped B+LNZ connect with, to monitor and action if an alert was received. By implementing the satellite GPS units, B+LNZ have reduced their health and safety risk and can now always ascertain where any team member and vehicle is at any given time.
B+LNZ have also had great success improving the driving behaviour of their team. Using Argus Tracking’s Driver Behaviour, B+LNZ has been able to identify the at-risk drivers within their fleet and work on changing these behaviours. Overspeed reports are automatically emailed to each driver every week to make them aware of their overspeed instances, and the leaderboard report is presented to their leadership teams to show how the fleet is performing.
When GPS was first implemented, B+LNZ’s driving behaviour score was above the national average. Now, their Driver Behaviour score is continually below the national average.
While B+LNZ use Fleet Partners NZ to look after their fleet, they also use Argus Tracking’s compliance section as a second check for their service reminders, giving them peace of mind that their fleet remains legally compliant. Without this additional compliance overview, things can easily get overlooked, and at the time the GPS units were first installed into the fleet, the Argus team noticed that one vehicle was overdue for RUCs. B+LNZ were advised and shown how to view this in the compliance page, and when they checked with the driver who confirmed it was overdue, they were very grateful.
"Thanks again for letting me know about this overdue RUC ticket - I checked in with the driver and he confirmed he was over his allocation!" The RUC warning in the Argus Tracking compliance portal helped B+LNZ to avoid a potential fine of nearly $2,000 if they had been pulled over by police.
While it’s impossible to put a price on the safety of their team, avoiding administration errors that could cause infringements like this brings a financial return on investment that makes the Argus Tracking system even more cost-effective for B+LNZ.
