Learn how Cochrane Transport moved from a paper-based system to an online solution that helped them manage their jobs with ease, and why their customers love the MyTrucking customer portal.
Ashburton-based Cochrane Transport is owned and operated by John Campbell and his wife, Jo. The business is a general freight operation, servicing the rural industries. Large clients include Farm Source, PlaceMakers and Mitre 10.
There are 11 trucks in the fleet and the backbone of the business is hiab cranes and Moffett truck mounted forklifts (all-terrain forklifts able to be loaded on the back of a truck and offloaded again), which means Cochrane Transport has the ability to unload themselves – a major benefit for farmers, who don’t need to be present for delivery.
Their freight trucks run in and out of Christchurch daily, bringing product and stock feed that is then delivered to farms. The building industry is also a key part of the business, transporting timber, cladding and trusses, and delivering on site.
Owner John Campbell says they ran a paper system with day sheets. Jobs came in and were added to the day sheet, then ticked off as they were completed. “It was a bit like the old diary system but because of the number of jobs we do in a day that wasn’t cutting it. We can do 70-80 jobs in a day when we’re busy.”
“We thought ‘there has to be a better way’, and were looking at what was out there. I happened to pick up a trucking magazine and there was an article on MyTrucking. We contacted them and Sam (Orsborn) was coming down the next week. We caught up for a coffee and the rest is history.”
“Very easy. We signed up and had a play around for a bit to find what worked for us. Because we do a lot of freight we have a lot of different products we use. There’s not really anything that can go wrong with MyTrucking. To set it up and use it was just so easy – if I can work it, anyone can!
“The support from MyTrucking has just been fantastic, if we ever have a question they’re always there to help out. That side of things I think is really great, the support is second to none.”
“Management of jobs. It’s easy to allocate jobs and to get them to drivers, which is something I’ve just started doing with the driver’s app. When I’m out driving a truck I can just load a new job on my phone and send it off, simple. Then it’s sitting on the screen of their phone and it’s in the system. I have all the trucks allocated to my phone and can load a job at any time.”
“Being able to track the jobs and also with the customer portal our customers are able to track their jobs too. For example, we do a huge amount of work for Niagara Timber, a saw mill and timber supply business, and do all of the product into Christchurch. On a typical day we might do 20 deliveries for them. Once the delivery is done they know it’s completed by just looking in their portal. If they get a query from a client they can access all the information – Proof of Delivery (PoD) etc – it’s all there so they don’t need to come back to me. The customers like being able to track jobs, they know when we’ve accepted a job and exactly when it’s been delivered. And we’re not having to get PoDs for customers all the time. The customer portal is a huge plus.”
“Ease of invoicing with MyTrucking being compatible with Xero is another big one.
“The other thing I like is once a job is loaded in, it’s there. With a diary system you might miss a job, with MyTrucking once I put a job in it’s there, in your face, until it’s completed or deleted. It’s a reminder that the job has to be done, or charged out. It gets rid of a lot of paper out of the system. The vast majority of our customers who are on the portal, it’s all paperless now.”
What’s your favourite truck? Scania, for reliability, comfort and ease of use. I don’t think there’s anything I don’t like about Scania to be honest – maybe the price tag!
Best place to get a pie? Harvey’s Bakehouse in Ashburton and Rakaia, they’re locally owned and their pies are amazing. The Sheffield Pie Shop would be my second pick.
Favourite MyTrucking feature? The customer portal.
Best way to acknowledge a truckie? A wee lift of the hand wave, to acknowledge they’ve seen you, hi and have a nice day.
MyTrucking is designed to assist transport operators with job management workflow.
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