“Does Your Software Save You Over $90,000.00 a Year?”
 Jake
Peters started New Hope Transport Ltd. of Oak Bluff, Manitoba in
1991 operating primarily as a flat deck operation with some vans and
pneumatic tankers. New Hope hauls steel, machinery, lumber, and
general merchandise across Canada and the US. In this interview,
Jake speaks out about his Axon Experience.
Tell us about your experience with Axon
“Axon is a very strong software program. The fact is that the
program never breaks down on us. We don't ever have situations where
our system crashes, like other programs. It has been a strong,
maintenance-free program right from the very start.
Your support team has been there to help us
throughout. When we phone to find out if they can help us, we always
have an answer or they work on it right away and phone us back.”
How has Axon helped your company?
“We use the whole Axon program here. We use every facet of it. Our
shop uses the inventory and work order system, and in the office we
use every single piece of it. It interfaces with
PC Miler, and the
Qualcomm satellite interfaces through the dispatch. I use the owner
operator settlements, and, once the information is all there and
checked out, we can do our owner operator settlements in about half
an hour.
It all starts from the dispatchers entering the
loads and the units and drivers, and then it goes on to the person
who updates the routing and the US/Canada border locations, and then
it's up to me after that to make sure everything else is right.
It used to take us four days to
process the
payroll for 28 trucks. Since installing Axon, we’ve grown to
about 90 drivers and 15 office staff. With the shop, we have over
130 people that work for us. Now I can do payroll in a day and a
half, for a two-week period. And that's verifying all of their
trips, mileages – that's everything. And that’s with the same admin
staff. At 28 units, there were three of us, and at 90 units there
are three of us. And I don't work as hard now as I did back then.
When we switched to the new Axon program, I shaved two days off my
payroll.
Now we’ve gotten to where we're invoicing every
single day. As the trip sheets come in and the loads happen to come
in, we're doing the invoicing.”
Can you estimate your return on investment
with your Axon software?
“The Axon software will save you on people. It saves you on extra
salaries that you don't have to put out and training as far as extra
people goes. I'm sure that if we didn’t have it, that we’d be
looking at having at least three more people, so it's probably a
savings of close to ninety to a hundred thousand dollars a year.”
Has working with Axon helped you improve or
maintain customer relations?
“Customer relations is a people thing. A big thing that helps us
with customer relations is our satellite units on our trucks. But
Axon speeds up the time that it takes to find information. And I
think it benefits us and the customer in that we are able to get the
invoices out quickly.”
Tell us about the type of support you get from
Axon.
“The support has been very good. If somebody in your office doesn't
know how to fix a problem or isn't as knowledgeable, they'll place
us through to somebody else that is. And we always seem to get an
answer. They'll fix it up as fast as they possibly can.”
How easy is it to use the software?
“When we switched over to Axon, the transition was like a breath of
fresh air. I would really suggest to people that haven't switched
over, that the Axon system has just simplified and enhanced our
operation and enhanced our productivity so that we are able to do a
whole lot more. Nobody should be afraid to switch over.”
How would you describe the training that you
received for the program?
“They trained us online, and it worked very well. It's amazing how
your support team were able to teach us everything online.
Everybody, including our dispatchers, picked up on it without any
problem. I think we probably had to make two or three phone calls
after that, and that was it. The new program is a lot easier to work
with than our old one. Especially having it live, so that whatever
you do reflects every single area, instantly. You don't have to do a
transaction report, it just goes straight through to where it’s
needed, and it works so easily.”
What would you tell your peers about Axon?
“I think you've got to be a certain size, of course, to buy it,
because you can probably do everything by hand until you get to six
or eight trucks, and then you would have to decide, ‘Do I hire
another person, or do I purchase an Axon system?’ And then
purchasing a system would take the place of an extra wage.
When people phone me up to find out what I think
about Axon, it's never a bad word about you guys because it's always
been excellent. I say that it's a very strong system; it will do
whatever you may want to do in a trucking operation.”
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