Powerful mixed fleet management
A UK equipment rental company has boosted operational efficiency with a fleet management solution from GemOne.
Balloo Hire, a rental company of industrial machines in Northern Ireland, found managing a mixed rental fleet, including forklifts and a range of other machinery to be labour intensive and time-consuming.
After meeting GemOne in 2020, Balloo Hire’s general manager Mark Grundy and his colleagues decided that Balloo Hire would connect 50 machines to the GemOne platform.
“It was a good product and it was priced correctly,” says Mark. GemOne works independently of vehicle manufacturers so they were able to connect all makes and models in the Balloo Hire fleet to the system, as well as connect existing trackers that had been installed from other providers. “They integrated all of that into our existing ERP system,” says Mark of GemOne. “They listened to us when we asked for it.”
Balloo Hire was able to monitor not just their forklifts, but their entire mixed rental fleet on one single cloud platform. With GemOne’s solution, they were able to monitor where a machine was located, when it was being operated, and when it was due for maintenance, all in real time.
“It gave us visibility over the fleet and an understanding of how our assets were being used,” says Mark. “That’s partly from a security point-of-view, but it also allows us to see the regions we’re serving visually. It informed our business decisions.”
With the capacity to measure the hours of usage on each machine across the fleet, Mark and his team could more effectively manage rental contracts and better service machinery. “It just tells the truth,” says Mark about the GemOne system. “It makes the account management easier and cleaner, and the customer experience a better one.”
Since those initial 50 installations in 2020, Balloo Hire has continued to connect machines to the GemOne system. Today, they have more than 1,200 assets connected across their mixed rental fleet, from forklifts and telescopic handlers to powered access equipment.
“We ramped up quite quickly because we’ve been very impressed with the product,” says Mark. “GemOne have been very attentive. They’ve done what they said they were going to do.”
For more information, visit www.gemone.com
