Stop Redundant Data Entry
Following is an excerpt from an interview
with Garry Johnson, General Manager of Heck's Trucking, and Andy's
Light Oilfield Hauling, conducted by Byron McFarland
To start off Garry,
would you tell us a little about Heck's Trucking?
Garry: Heck's Trucking
incorporated in 1973. Lawrence Heck started with one truck moving
service rigs. I came to work for him in 1980 and he had 3 trucks at
the time. It slowed down in the oil industry in 1981/82 - we had to
get into the drilling business to survive because by now we were up
to 8 or 9 trucks. In 1982 I was dispatching and managing things and
we were up to 15 trucks. By '87 I was actually thinking of going to
go on my own. Lawrence and I had the opportunity to buy Andy's Oil
Field Hauling together. Heck's were primarily drilling rig movers,
so with buying Andy's, it gave us the opportunity to do it all.
Andy's does all the production service work and so on, and Heck's
does primarily drilling rig and heavy haul. That added 5 trucks, and
we grew from there.
We built the new shop and moved out here in 1990.
We were up to 10 trucks in Andy's, and at that time 25 or so in
Heck's. And it just went from there. The dispatching was always done
manually, and that turned into a big job. A lot of time was spent on
that. Today, Heck's has 38 trucks and Andy's has 15.
What do you find most rewarding about your
business?
Probably the reputation that we have. With the
majority of our customers we have the reputation of being the big
guys on the streets. Not the big guys in size, but the cream of the
crop, as far as wanting a good rig mover and the reputation we have
in having good iron, good people, and being kind of the elite of the
business, is something we're quite proud of hearing lots of.
What kind of trends do you see occurring now that
effect your business in a major way?
Well, fuel prices. And the amount of equipment on
the road today. Everybody's been adding equipment. Of course with
the oil prices and the gas prices, everything's quite active and
busy, but when this slows down, there's going to be a problem here
because there's way too much equipment for the number of rigs that
are out here. [A lot of] guys keep old trucks or re-sell them at an
auction sale and that just puts it into the hands of somebody else.
This industry - oil patch - is up and down. It's
incredibly good right now, but six months from now you don't know.
As far as we forecast in this business is six months.
You've been business partners with Axon since
about March of '97, can you talk a little bit about your
relationship with Axon?
For us, I guess, what was interesting with Axon was that they
understood the trucking industry. The programs that they had in
place already were trucking-orientated and were streamlined to that.
Like, the dispatch program - we get nothing but great comments from
people across the industry when they see one of our dispatches
laying in one of our trucks. We use it as a selling tool to promote
business. We lay out how our dispatching is handled, and these
people can't believe that we actually sit here ... I think we're
probably the only company in Alberta that move drilling rigs, where
the dispatcher in the office actually does the load breakdown of the
rig move. So my guys, when they get here in the morning to go to
work, these truck drivers pull that off the board. They know exactly
what they're hauling that day. Things may change a little bit out in
the field, but 95% of the time, what we put on that paper is
followed to a T.
And it makes the truck job easier too as far as
taking the rig apart and putting it together because he can
concentrate on doing that and not worrying about what these trucks
are doing because they know what they're going to pick up, right?
They know their loads, they don't have to be told, or walk around
wasting time trying to figure out what they're going to haul. And
then [because we know what they are hauling] we have the permit in
place before the guy even loads. It just speeds up the whole
process.
It sounds like you have the
dispatching software really working for you.
We had a dispatch program before Axon. The
biggest problem we had was the data entry being done here 2 and 3
different times on computer systems. Now, 90% of the time, when the
dispatcher does the dispatch, he also does the job orders up ... When
he closes that off, he's invoicing it from his desk. It's invoiced,
and it's just a matter of the girls mailing it out. Accounting
checks it to make sure there are no errors, but other than that,
it's shot right out in the mail. We can move a rig today and have it
invoiced tomorrow. The quicker you get them out the quicker you'll
get the money back.
How did you find the transition to Axon Trucking
Software compared to your earlier trucking software systems?
Our people love it because it's so easy to
operate. It's user friendly. Even the dispatch guys are saying,
"it's by number", or "fill in the blanks, and away you go." It's
quite simple once you get onto it. So what we found with our guys,
we can bring in a guy with very, very little computer skills, and,
with the dispatch program for example, he can get in and get to work
in a very short time. It's just a matter of him learning the
keyboard, and that's it, away he goes.
How has your growth over the past 3 years
affected your administration staffing requirements?
The staff is the same size, but from the time we
bought this program, we're up at least 20-25 units. So of course
we're generating a lot more revenue with the same staff.
How important do you think it is to have a
software system tailored towards your specific needs?
Oh, crucial. Crucial. Without our [customized]
dispatching program, I don't know how we'd operate today - and I
don't know how these other companies operate without it! You know,
we actually go back on the history of rig moves, for example, and we
have all this information available. We track which truck
hauled each load. Every rig has some quirky loads on it, and we know
them. So when we move a rig, for example, we try to put the same guy
hauling it because we have the ability to retain that [information].
I couldn't imagine how many people it would take
here to operate without having the dispatch program that we have,
doing the permitting on the dispatch program and "the whole 9
yards". I would think we would probably need double the dispatch.
I'm running 2 dispatchers at Heck's and 1 at Andy's, and I would
have to double those guys for sure. And that's just more paper work,
more data entry, you know. That's why it has to be streamlined to
what we're doing.
And I like Axon's ability too, that we could add
[to the software] as we went along. I think we started with the
accounting package and then we worked on the dispatch, and
everything ties together. Now we've set up a parts man out in our
shop. So now I can look at adding the Axon
truck maintenance package. And
that's what's nice, to have those add-ons so that you can add them
when the need arises. Things like that.
Gary, in closing, in a few words, could you sum
up your experience with Axon or our relationship as business
partners over the past few years?
Well, to me, we have a fantastic working
relationship. Part of the success of our company is [due to] Axon. I
think the way that we do business today and the way that we work as
a team here - Axon's a part of that team. Their software has created
that affect for us all, and helped pull us all together.
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