The Lone Star Corporation is a full-service instrumentation and electrical construction company operating a fleet of 214 vehicles in the challenging terrain surrounding Odessa, Texas. Lone Star is licensed to serve in New Mexico and Texas, providing innovative, single source electrical construction services for some of the most demanding heavy industrial clients in diverse sectors including: oil and gas, refining, petroleum and petrochemicals, mining, manufacturing, power plants, and municipal.
When your company motto is “Power to provide” and your customer base consists of the demanding, no-excuse clients in the heavy-duty industries listed above, efficient fleet management has got to be a top priority. For these industrial clients, failure is not an option. Chief Operating Officer Landon Hobbs turned to Whip Around to meet the challenges Lone Star was facing each day while providing the Odessa region with services such as powerline maintenance and repair, power distribution, and electrical systems installation, to name just a few of Lone Star’s wide array of services.
With industrial projects underway all across the challenging West Texas region, Lone Star’s fleet of 214 specialized vehicles is constantly on the move. Lone Star crews frequently need to traverse poor roads in adverse weather conditions that accelerate vehicle wear and tear. This leads to more accidents, lawsuits from people who are involved in those accidents with company vehicles, and insurance company issues generated by fleet inspection reporting demands.
Without a reliable, robust daily inspection procedure, vehicle faults went undetected and repair costs soared when catastrophic breakdowns, which could have been prevented by a rigorous Driver Vehicle Inspection Report (DVIR) procedure, left the fleet undermanned and under-equipped. Vehicle downtime meant specialty crews were also down, racking up costs as high as $12,000 per day. “Vehicles offline is the single biggest cost to our business,” said Hobbs.
Eventually, Landon Hobbs found himself at the breaking point, one we see all too frequently with fleet operations managers who are overwhelmed by a sea of DOT paperwork, not to mention a costly barrage of DOT fines and out-of-control vehicle downtime. After suffering through one of the most costly periods for the Lone Star fleet four years ago, Hobbs described the stressful scenario which led him to seek the Whip Around paperless solution.
At one point, Lone Star’s HQ actually ran out of space to store the massive piles of paperwork generated by day-to-day fleet operations. Lone Star’s HQ was a mess. As we’ll see shortly, the ability to lay hands on a specific daily vehicle inspection report (DVIR) in a timely manner can have huge returns on investment, aside from the other ROI advantages that Whip Around brings to fleet managers in high-performance industries.
Hobbs told us how he found and made his final choice to use Whip Around, recalling the day when, finally, enough was enough. “I was so sick and tired of using paper, and one day I literally snapped when trying to find a report for insurance purposes. I googled ‘Paperless Daily Vehicle Inspections’ and you guys were about fifth on the page. I decided to try Fleetio and you guys but went with Whip Around as it was so much easier to use, and Fleetio kept trying to upsell [us] products and features we weren’t interested in, like their GPS.”
Whip Around Becomes Cornerstone of Lone Star’s Fleet Operations
Whip Around’s custom form builder had Hobbs up and running almost immediately to improve prioritizing of inspection faults and maintenance tasks with better flow and status control. Whip Around allowed him to do it all from the app on his smartphone, without the need to generate more paper clutter. Hobbs told us about his experience with Whip Around’s highly intuitive, user-friendly app and said the form builder became one of his favorite features.
Hobbs also had positive feedback on the customer support provided by Whip Around Customer Support Rep Lauren. He commented: “Lauren has been great to deal with. She made the entire onboarding of all the vehicles and drivers super easy”.
Today, Whip Around has become the cornerstone of Lone Star’s fleet operations management system. Every driver receives an iPhone with Whip Around preloaded, and each new driver spends two weeks in the yard as part of the induction process. The Whip Around module is used to orient the newcomer on daily vehicle inspections, and health and safety procedures. Hobbs also uses the custom form builder to compile checklists that keep everyone up to speed on health and safety compliance for the yard and buildings.
“I was building forms within minutes of signing up, which was pretty much when I decided [Lone Star] would definitely purchase. I confirmed that four days later even though you guys were offering me a longer trial period,” said Hobbs.
Whip Around’s ROI at Lone Star
Fleet management is all about the bottom line and return on investment (ROI). While the primary purpose of Whip Around at Lone Star is meeting the demands of DOT compliance with DVIRs, Hobbs has reported some other very significant returns on his Whip Around investment, some which he’d never anticipated.
Cost Savings Generated by Robust Maintenance
DVIRs identified filter issues, which allowed early preventative servicing and savings of $6,000 per unit in replacement filter costs. This also spares the 3-4 week wait for these hard-to-stock parts to arrive, reducing downtime numbers for the fleet.
“We’ve already saved close to $20,000 in maintenance repair bills via Whip Around’s ability to identify early indicators,” said Hobbs.
Reduced Liability With Digitized Well Managed Records
In Odessa (and sadly, most other regions of the country), it’s very common for a company to be sued whenever a company vehicle is involved in an accident. This can include company personnel who have been injured as well as other parties involved. Lone Star told us about several cases where being able to produce timely DVIR documentation reduced the company’s liability.
In one case a driver tried to blame faulty steering alignment for the head-on crash of his company vehicle. Hobbs was able to quickly lay hands on the DVIR history, which documented that the driver had successfully carried out all daily inspections for the previous four months on that particular vehicle without a fault. Confronted with such indisputable evidence, the driver had to admit that he’d been distracted by eating and cleaning his glasses, which was the true cause of the accident.
The ability to showcase the vehicle inspection history has played prominent roles in eliminating liability claims when the company has been accused of being negligent or at fault.
Lone Star has now made Whip Around compulsory for all drivers, with driver bonuses providing the incentive for carrying out the daily inspections, which are so vital to efficient fleet operations and management. Now, with all drivers reliably carrying out mandatory DVIRs at 6am, Hobbs can receive all detected faults in the fleet by 7am, prioritize them with fleet manager Steve, and pass them on to the in-house or external mechanics for leased vehicles by 8am. Hobbs remarked about his typical day with Whip Around. “I do use the dashboard, but there are days when I run the entire process purely through the fault emails, especially if I’m on the move”.
But our favorite comment from Lone Star’s satisfied COO on his Whip Around experience has to be “Your guys’ product is way too cheap!”. Coming from the COO of Lone Star, a company which operates in such a challenging business environment, there can be no higher praise.
If your fleet operations are buried in a mountain of paper, your vehicle downtime is out of control, and you’re ready to make the digital transformation for streamlined DOT compliance with a robust DVIR-based maintenance program that can boost your bottom line, it’s time to take advantage of the digital Whip Around solution. If you have any questions about integrating Whip Around into your fleet management program, don’t hesitate to contact us.
