Optimized machinery rental for Huurland with cost-effective tracking technology

Huurland is a Belgian based family company renting out machinery for construction and gardening companies. Giving customers quick and efficient access to the right machinery is their hobbyhorse.To ensure that operations in the background run well, Pascal, CEO of Huurland, implemented Sensolus for a part of their non-powered fleet. This gives Huurland a cost-effective solution to see the utilization of their construction lifts in real-time, eliminating time-consuming tasks.

The challenge of Huurland was knowing whether or not a construction lift is in use. When the construction lift is not in use, it’s position is flat. When it’s pointed upwards, it’s in use. Pascal explains, “a contractor would often tell us that we could pick up the lift because it was no longer in use. However, when we arrived on site it was still in use.”

There was no solution in place to avoid back-and-forth phone calls and at times unneeded trips to contractors still using construction lifts while claiming otherwise.

This resulted in Pascal looking for a solution. A couple of their machines are equipped with a powered track and trace solution. Soon enough Pascal found out that the costs outweighed the benefits, “the cost of the powered track and trace solution is in fact larger than the theft risk and related costs.” This made him pivot.

He started looking for a solution that could actively inform him about utilization of the machinery, in specific instances where he needed this information. For example, knowing when a construction lift is in use. This is how he got to Sensolus. After a successful Proof of Concept (POC), we were the only provider able to monitor machine utilization as requested by Huurland in a cost-effective way.

Apart from utilization monitoring, Pascal aimed at a solution with a long battery lifetime that could be integrated with their ERP system. He mentions “We looked at GPRS based solutions but these solutions have a short battery lifetime and high cost compared to autonomous trackers.”

As mentioned, Pascal wanted a solution that showed whether a construction lift was in use. On top of this, he wanted his branch managers to be able to see this information in their ERP system. How did we enable this?

Together with Huurland, we set up a Proof of Concept (POC) to check whether the way we measured the utilization of construction lifts suited their process. Once it did, we represented the utilization of the construction lift graphically and pushed this data to their ERP system. Now that the process was right, it was time for the roll out.

The roll-out of Sensolus went fairly smooth. Pascal explains, “we received a large box with the trackers in it, accompanied by a practical manual. All we had to do was use a couple of screws to attach the tracker and mount it in the right direction. It was very simple and user-friendly.”

Looking at the future, Pascal is looking at extending the usage of Sensolus trackers for other non-powered assets. Furthermore, the three-monthly inspection of non-powered assets can also be supported by Sensolus. There is still some potential for process optimization with Sensolus within Huurland.

Pascal concludes, we offer a broad product range, the challenge for us is to manage complexity in the background and make it as easy as possible for our end customer. Sensolus is a part of solving this complex puzzle.”