Locating The Loos

Tim Mikkelsen's company, Kapiti Hire, rents portaloos and construction equipment to customers operating construction sites up and down the Kapiti Coast. The company owns a lot of expensive equipment so keeping track of it and making sure they get paid the hireage is top of mind.

But inevitably it's the toilets that attract attention. Luckily Tim has a good sense of humour.

When you need to go, it helps to know where the toilets are

Kapiti Hire hires out 50 portaloos, and Tim uses Teletrac Navman software to map a site around the location of each portaloo so he and his team can report on site activity.

"Our service trucks have Teletrac Navman Qubes installed so we can see when and how often our truck was there to service each portaloo. At the end of every month we run a site report and this gives us exact time and duration that the service vehicle was on each site, which allows for very accurate – and regular – customer billing."

Before installing Teletrac Navman the team at Kapiti Hire used a manual system to track site service visits. This was a very convoluted process as it involved checking with two managers and the serviceman to ensure the billing was accurate. Because after all, a job is not over until the paperwork is done.

The introduction of Teletrac Navman has revolutionised the billing process, and allowed Tim and the team to wash their hands of service problems.

"Teletrac Navman has allowed us to make service billing a one man job," says Tim. "Now we don't need to confirm with the driver, we go exactly on what the Teletrac Navman system tells us. I reckon this saves us about 2-3 hours on the last day of the month."

And, unlike the constipated accountant who couldn't budget, Tim and the team have found the cost and time savings from Teletrac Navman are significant when you're cycle billing long term contracts at month end.

Quite a sense of relief then.

Tracking a moving target – where is that mobile toilet now?

Kapiti Hire has also taken advantage of the Teletrac Navman Qtanium 100, a self-powered unit designed to track unpowered assets, and has installed one on a trailerised portaloo.

"One of our clients runs an underground construction team and needs a trailerised portaloo as their work site is constantly moving," says Tim. "So of course they need to take the portaloo with them. The Qtanium 100 uploads its location every 12 hours which shows up on the Teletrac Navman software. We just look it up on the software and off our guy goes to service the toilet.

"Before we got Teletrac Navman, we'd have to phone the project overseer each week to find out where the portaloo was, now we don't have to do that. The information is on screen, saving us time and money."

Phew, there's the loo, you could say?

Doing the business

Being able to track the toilets has been great for Tim's business, but it still hasn't solved that age old problem – whether to leave the toilet seat up or down......