Jake Peters started New Hope Transport Ltd. of Oak Bluff, Manitoba in 1991 operating primarily as a flat deck operation with some vans and pneumatic tankers. New Hope hauls steel, machinery, lumber, and general merchandise across Canada and the US. In this interview, Jake speaks out about his Axon Software experience.
Q&A
Tell us about your experience with Axon Software.
Axon is a very strong software program. The fact is that the program never breaks down on us. We don’t ever have situations where our system crashes, like other programs. It has been a strong, maintenance-free program right from the very start.Your support team has been there to help us throughout. When we phone to find out if they can help us, we always have an answer, or they work on it right away and phone us back.
How has Axon Software helped your company?
We use the whole Axon program here. We use every facet of it. Our shop uses the inventory and work order system, and in the office, we use every single piece of it. It interfaces with PC*MILER, and the Omnitracs satellite interfaces through the dispatch. I use the owner operator settlements, and, once the information is all there and checked out, we can do our owner operator settlements in about half an hour.It all starts from the dispatchers entering the loads and the units and drivers, and then it goes on to the person who updates the routing and the US/Canada border locations, and then it’s up to me after that to make sure everything else is right.It used to take us four days to process the payroll for 28 trucks. Since installing Axon, we’ve grown to about 90 drivers and 15 office staff. With the shop, we have over 130 people that work for us. Now I can do payroll in a day and a half, for a two-week period. And that’s verifying all of their trips, mileages – that’s everything. And that’s with the same admin staff. At 28 units, there were three of us, and at 90 units there are three of us. And I don’t work as hard now as I did back then. When we switched to the new Axon program, I shaved two days off my payroll.Now we’ve gotten to where we’re invoicing every single day. As the trip sheets come in and the loads happen to come in, we’re doing the invoicing.
Can you estimate your return on investment with your Axon Software?
The Axon Software will save you on people. It saves you on extra salaries that you don’t have to put out and training as far as extra people goes. I’m sure that if we didn’t have it, that we’d be looking at having at least three more people, so it’s probably a savings of close to $90,000 – $100,000 a year.
Has working with Axon Software helped you improve or maintain customer relations?
Customer relations is a people thing. A big thing that helps us with customer relations is our satellite units on our trucks. But Axon speeds up the time that it takes to find information. And I think it benefits us and the customer in that we are able to get the invoices out quickly.
Tell us about the type of support you get from Axon Software.
The support has been very good. If somebody in your office doesn’t know how to fix a problem or isn’t as knowledgeable, they’ll place us through to somebody else that is. And we always seem to get an answer. They’ll fix it up as fast as they possibly can.
How easy is it to use the software?
When we switched over to Axon, the transition was like a breath of fresh air. I would really suggest to people that haven’t switched over, that the Axon system has just simplified and enhanced our operation and enhanced our productivity so that we are able to do a whole lot more. Nobody should be afraid to switch over.
How would you describe the training that you received for the program?
They trained us online, and it worked very well. It’s amazing how your support team were able to teach us everything online. Everybody, including our dispatchers, picked up on it without any problem. I think we probably had to make two or three phone calls after that, and that was it. The new program is a lot easier to work with than our old one. Especially having it live, so that whatever you do reflects every single area, instantly. You don’t have to do a transaction report, it just goes straight through to where it’s needed, and it works so easily.When people phone me up to find out what I think about Axon, it’s never a bad word about you guys because it’s always been excellent. I say that it’s a very strong system; it will do whatever you may want to do in a trucking operation.
What would you tell your peers about Axon Software?
I think you’ve got to be a certain size, of course, to buy it, because you can probably do everything by hand until you get to six or eight trucks, and then you would have to decide, ‘Do I hire another person, or do I purchase an Axon system?’ And then purchasing a system would take the place of an extra wage.When people phone me up to find out what I think about Axon, it’s never a bad word about you guys because it’s always been excellent. I say that it’s a very strong system; it will do whatever you may want to do in a trucking operation.
