Resources

Improving Productivity for the Agri Industry

by Rob, owner of RC Fithall

About RC Fithall

My name's Rob, Rob Fithall. 

We're a mechanical business on a little farm out of Saint Arnold in Victoria. We service and fix tractors and header, sprayers. Ourselves, we do a little bit of farming on the side and a little bit of contracting with windrowers and headers, but our main income is our mechanical side of the business. 

So we got three mechanics including myself and then two apprentices and then in the busy times of harvest it'll be six or seven of us driving gear and running around like headless chooks. 

We will crop, well we're sort of big in our barley, also a bit of wheat and canola and a bit of oats as well. We lease a little bit of ground and also the farm as well, altogether it's probably 5 00 Acres that we crop. 

We reached out to BOA, saw their concept on Facebook, their trailer idea. So really, us boys, us mechanics we're all got a Ute with a few tools on the back obviously. We can just hook onto this trailer (The BOApod), I thought that was a great idea and it’s well-organized trailer too. 

The Challenges They Faced as a Farmer and the Onsite Solution

We're an hour and a half away from the next major people that can make a hose and then plus it just cost and the fees of downtime on trying to get a machine going. It was always half a day or at least a day to try and get a machine going with blown hose something simple. I saw this idea and wanted to jump on it and helped service us with our own gear for sure, but also now with the mechanical business as well it helps us out on that side of it and helps any other Farmers or anyone with earthmoving gear or ag gear. 

Yeah with farming obviously, when the rain's coming, we're all in a mad rush to try and get the grain off the paddock, to get it in its top grade. Us farmers turn into a different person around December. We're all just wanting to go go go. Headers run 24/7, nearly, over here at harvest time. Yeah downtime is a killer. I suppose you don't look at the cost of how much a hose is going to cost and lose three hours running on a header, this is our critical time. It's more, getting that probably 100 or 200 ton more grain off in the next three hours that we've lost to get in the silo. 

So yeah downtime's a killer and also, I guess we're always beating the weather at times. If we get a good harvest weather obviously we're going to be going 24/7. But if we know there's rain coming we go hammer and tong and just push that bit further. A header can, will be doing 50 to 60 tons an hour. Over three or four hours obviously you're gonna be two or three hundred ton roughly. Canola could cost 800 bucks a ton and then if you lose your grade back to 600 a ton with a different grade well, there's a fair whack of dollars there not getting into the silo. If we can come out and fix a blown hose in the next half an hour and get him running that we're going to be looking pretty hot, so yeah that's the idea of it I guess, that we can just pull in and get people going. 

Calculate your savings here.

So in the off-season, we look after 50 odd headers. So if we see a bit of a weep or a hose that's about to blow or just rubbed on the side, we'll change it. So that's the joys of obviously having this trailer now, we push more maintenance on the hydraulic side of it to prevent some of these jobs at Harvest time. There's no rush and no overtime to charge the farmer later on. Each mechanic's got their Ute and we pull on hook on and go on field work. 

The BOAhub Hydraulic Hose Management System

So we've got each of us using the app (The BOAhub) on the phone with the new jobbing now, it's working out well. 

Instead of using pen and paper with oily hands and stuff like that. We just scan the barcode on there and and use what we have and then yeah tell us what we've used and what to order next. The boys love it and we can write names and job cards to the app as well, on that side of it. So the mechanics are loving it, the boys are loving it. Instead of us writing down and putting in an order, it just seems to work well I just put our order in and put an order number to it and the next couple of days it's freighted out to us. And then in the office it comes up on our iPad, the office admin goes in sees what we've used, and bills out and the hours on the job, without doing any sort of repair order cards or stuff like that. 

It helps out the guy in the office for sure. 

So beforehand obviously we were just writing a little note, just tearing the papers out sticking it on a needle in the office for the next week, where he would just pull it off the needle and send a bill out. Some of our mechanics don't write the best, in that hindsight. Also we'd be only writing 3/8 hose. Well, what the --- does 3/8 hose mean. 

So we want 100R dash 06 or something like that. So he can look on his spreadsheets to put in our reference for the part number and send the bill out. So that side of it works well.  

Obviously, the boys in Australia have been good as well, touch base and see how we're going. We can always ring up and just get something asap if we have to. They've been good on that side of it. They're there to help, for sure. No complaints on that side of it. 

Conclusion About the BOApod

Without the trailer, the times we blew a hose, we would easy lose half a day. With our own setup, with our trailer and ute, if we're going out to remove the hose, well, we're already 10 minutes after removing the hose, we've got the new hose made and are putting it back on. The trailer's good, traveling wise, it brakes well and travels well. I've had it for 8-9 months now and it hasn't missed a beat. 

Let's Get In Touch

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Call us at +64 9-579 2103 / 1800 40 30 40

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