About Goode Companies (GCR)
In 1991, Baltimore was the founding location of Goode Companies Inc (GCR), a company that provides environmentally friendly focused waste and recycling solutions. This family-friendly provider aims to safely dispose of waste for residential and commercial customers. With the mission of timely and safe disposal, GCR invested in Whip Around’s technology to ensure their mission stayed successful.
GCR has a total of 140 assets and 200 drivers across five locations in Maryland. Tracking all asset maintenance and drivers can be difficult, especially using paper trails and books. Senior Maintenance Director, Todd Roach, would have to travel to each location to make sure that maintenance was being properly managed. “With this many locations, it’s hard for me to be at every location all the time and keep up with all the books.” Before implementing Whip Around, GCR struggled to have complete control and visibility over its assets, drivers, and locations. By trying Whip Around at their Southern Maryland location first, GCR decided to expand the software to all five locations, and the results have been transformational.
Visibility Across all Five Locations
Before implementing Whip Around GCR struggled with visibility across all five locations, which unfortunately resulted in delays. Roach claimed, “Maintenance would get put behind, and whenever you put something in maintenance behind, it always gets worse.” Understandably, Roach had a hard time being able to enforce maintenance because the communication was slow. Whip Around offers a feature where the senior maintenance director is able to have complete control over all 5 locations.
“I can see that the driver is writing something up, and I can make sure that it gets addressed whereas if it were in a book, I wouldn’t see it until I visited the site of that location.” Now that GCR has implemented Whip Around, Roach can monitor all five locations from anywhere. Problems are being fixed before becoming financial sinkholes, and drivers are traveling safer. “With Whip Around I can be anywhere and look at any of the driver write-ups for the day and make sure the repairs are getting done without being on location 24/7.” Roach is now able to focus on resolving maintenance issues, instead of searching through paperwork to find the issues that need to be fixed.
Record Keeping
Dealing with warranties can be a challenging task, but it can be made much easier with the proper tools. Roach found that with Whip Around, he was able to easily track inspection records and prove that an issue with a new truck was due to a defect in the product and not negligence from drivers. One of the pins for a sweep blade had become loose, causing the cylinder to fall out on route, which in turn, bent the sweep blade. “With Whip Around I was able to go back and prove that the bolts didn’t back out, which would have been a maintenance issue.” Roach said, “I was able to prove and still get the warranty.” A blade and cylinder are around $4,000 to replace. Because GCR had invested in Whip Around, Roach was able to deal with his warranty without spending painstaking time searching and sifting through inspection reports.
Monitoring Driver Inspections
For the trucks in GCR’s fleet, proper cleaning behind the blades is critical and unforgiving if not conducted regularly. “ If we are not checking or inspecting behind the blade, we are asking for trouble, we are asking for downtime.” Drivers must clean behind the blade often because trash will get stuck and compacted behind and under the cylinder, causing the hydraulic lines and cylinder to break at extreme costs. Unfortunately, drivers do not love cleaning behind the blade, and without monitoring the drivers, that task may easily be skipped, leading to expensive repairs and downtime.
GCR was able to customize their inspection forms so that drivers would have to take pictures of the back of the truck, the front of the truck, and most importantly behind the blade. “First of all, the driver already knows he has to clean the blade or we will send him back to clean it.” Roach explains, “However, by forcing the driver to take that picture we can then monitor, was it clean before a major failure? Or was this a driver issue? And we can address it accordingly.”
Whip Around Customer Service
“The support has been absolutely unbelievable, there has never been a call not returned, if I send an email, I get a response the same day. Great great great customer service,” Roach says. Overall, GCR has had more than a positive experience with Whip Around. Once the company implemented Whip Around at its Southern Maryland location, they knew the investment would more than pay for itself. “The more we used it the more we liked it.”
Now, GCR has complete visibility over its fleet and drivers across all five locations. Downtime has decreased significantly because Roach and management can see issues before becoming major problems. “The number of trucks down has decreased because I can see things before they become major problems.” Roach no longer has to worry about maintenance being completed and no longer has to sift through inspection reports to spot issues. The company can now focus on its mission of timely and safe disposal, instead of hustling to each location to make sure maintenance is being conducted.
