By: Farmobile Editors

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ABOUT

BRANDT is proud to be known as one of the fastest-growing, family-owned companies in the United States. Since 1953, the Brandt’s family and their employees have always been on the cutting edge of technology and innovation, a tradition that puts the company at the crossroads where high-tech and science meet modern agriculture. Farming now relies on data made up of genetics, chemistry, GPS systems, crop and soil analysis and much more.

THE CHALLENGE

BRANDT’S technology team sought a digital solution to help track their large mixed fleet, that serves most of Illinois. Managing and operating such a large fleet takes a professional management team and the right technology to aid logistics and help track equipment as it works in the fields. 

According to Jacob Winans, technical agronomy information specialist at BRANDT, one logistics challenge the company faced was the commercial fleet operators could be operating miles away from each other. Consequently, managing fleet logistics, machines, and operator status on fieldwork were increasingly difficult.

Another challenge was showing as-applied data to farmer-customers after application work was completed. The dispatchers had to rely on their operators to recall the acres they covered and how much was applied within each field boundary.

THE TRIAL

BRANDT began a trial with Farmobile in the Spring of 2019 to track their fleet at select locations (Lexington, Fairbury and Gridley in Illinois ). The total trial included 12 Farmobile PUC^TM devices to track those operators’ efficiencies. The operations managers targeted three main objectives:

• Fleet efficiency (fleet tracking)
• Agronomic data (LIVE and historic) 
• More accurate record-keeping

The Farmobile technology trial provided new fleet visibility — in real-time. 

“They know that, hey, tender truck A is going to get here before tender truck B or down the line and they can actually use that 5 or 10 minutes to be able to get another mix in the pot and get going; and then as soon they get there, blow it back in and get that truck back out on the road. Maybe get another 80 acres that day right before dark based on having better decisions being made,” noted Winans.

THE RESULTS

After the successful trial in 2019 BRANDT added the Farmobile PUC device to the full application and tender truck fleet — 150 machines are now equipped with the Farmobile PUC in the Spring of 2020.

 “That Farmobile technology gives our dispatch a web site or Ipad view so they can see machines running. It really does make it more efficient. They can actually know which equipment is going to get done faster than another one.” Jacob Winans

Winans said: “Adopting this Farmobile technology really has made the logistics part of it, the efficiency part, as well as being able to have the application layers for our growers has been a very invaluable tool to us.”