The exhibition at the IPWEA Fleet Conference plays an important role, where conference delegates can go up to the booths and find out more about certain service providers and what they can offer. Fleet Auto News’ Caroline Falls talked to a few of them.
At Hastings Deering booth’s was Greg Hewlitt. Greg is sales manager of government and motor graders. Hastings Deering is the exclusive supplier of Caterpillar equipment for Qld, NT, the Solomon Islands, New Caledonia and Papua New Guinea. He told FAN that Hastings Deering always exhibit at the IPWEA Fleet conference because of its high participation of local government among the delegates. Mining, construction and government sectors are three of the most important markets for Caterpillar yellow equipment sales, parts and service.
At the Plant Assessor booth was (left to right) Scott Morrow, national account development specialist, Megan Baker, customer success specialist, and Ben James, national business development manager. Plant Assessor has taken a booth at the IPWEA Fleet Conference since its inauguration.
“We’ve been longtime supporters. We’ve also helped IPWEA Fleet with the training manual they produce. We support them wherever we can,” the team told FAN.
So what is Plant Assessor? “It’s a software platform that allows customers to basically risk assess stock and manage the documentation of their equipment in a safe, simple and easy fashion,” said Ben. “The way it works is people can go online and sign up, or they can work with myself, Scott and Megan. What we do is take the complex and make it simple. WHS regulation and plant fleet safety is a rather complex task. We take all that information and make it a simple task.”
At the Sensium booth we found Ben Slater, marketing manager, and Jeremy McLean, CEO. Sensium is a telematics provider and this is their first time exhibiting at IPWEA Fleet.
What drew them to the conference? “The amount of work we have been putting in to provide councils with the right product,” said Jeremy. The conference has a lot of delegates from local government. “Councils we are working with recommended it to us,” Jeremy said, adding he estimated penetration of telematics into Australian fleet vehicles was about one million out of 25 million vehicles. So when we see that there are a lot of telematics companies around, there’s a lot of opportunity for every one of them to grow. Jeremy said Sensium’s strength is that it’s Brisbane based with local manufacturing. “We focus on quality and integrity of data. We aim to offer the best that we can possibly offer our customers.”
At the Netstar booth FAN spoke to Dean and Meyer. Netstar is a telematics provider headquartered in South Africa, where it provides for some 600,000 vehicles. Netstar bought out Pinpoint telematics group in Australia in 2019 and rebadged it. Now it has offices in Melbourne and Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide.
Talking about telematics in Australia, Meyer said: “There’s a lot of change. And, I think there’s a lot of excitement. Obviously, the world has changed a lot because of various circumstances, fuel costs and vehicle shortages. So, organisations are looking to find ways to better manage their fleet and make them last longer, be more efficient, and our technology helps.”
Does it matter what size the fleet is? “It doesn’t matter. It could be as simple as one vehicle or as many as 1,000, there’s a benefit, absolutely. Each has a different pain point. For a small business if a vehicle was stolen it could take a very long time to replace it. For one of our clients Energy Queensland it’s all about service to the community and critical services. They all have different pain points.”
