All new heavy Case machines come standard with ProCare, says Glenn Hayward, McCann’s VP of operations, which puts the dealer firmly in the seat of maintenance manager for those customers. ProCare includes a three-year/2,000-hour planned maintenance program. Hayward says McCann will upgrade the plan for machines that operate at higher hours.
The service is particularly useful to smaller fleets that do not have a fleet or maintenance manager on staff, he says.
“They love it. It’s peace of mind knowing that McCann Industries has got his back.”
How to use data for preventive maintenance
Hayward says McCann tracks 529 machines for about 200 companies. Of those, 116 heavy machines—excavators, dozers, motor graders, and wheel loaders—have ProCare programs. Some of those companies will have several heavy machines, but many will have only one or two units, he says.
Each month, McCann pulls the hour readings for those 116 units and compares the data to the previous month’s readings, including when the last maintenance service was done for each machine.
“Based on the current hour readings, [we’re able to tell] if service is due or coming due,” Hayward says. Each machine is assigned to a McCann branch when it’s sold, and those ProCare planned maintenance notifications are sent to the branches. The branch service manager contacts the owner of each ProCare machine for which he is responsible.
“We’re watching [the customer’s] hours and watching when his service is due,” Hayward says. “He gets the phone call from us, we tell him, ‘The unit’s due, when can we schedule?’ We make it easy on him.”
The dealer is the first line of contact for Case customers, says Richie Snyder, marketing manager for telematics and machine control for Case, and plays a key fleet-management role for the smaller customers and owner-operators.
“[They are] the ones that the customer trusts and knows is going to be there to support them,” says Snyder. “That customer is really relying on his dealership to be his fleet manager. [The dealer] understands what the customer is doing, what his job is, where is he going to be utilizing the machine, and what kind of production he wants out of them. They can come up with a plan together to help monitor and have that line of communication.”
ProCare is also transferrable to the next owner, according to Case, with the maintenance records tracked by the dealer.
The other 400 or so machines that McCann tracks are not ProCare machines. The service is not currently available for smaller machines, such as backhoe-loaders and skid steer loaders. All are capable of being outfit with telematics, and Case backhoes come with a free one-year subscription to SiteWatch telematics, however, which allows McCann to provide support when a customer needs help identifying and fixing a fault code issue. Hayward says after the fault is corrected, McCann will often monitor the machine for the customer to ensure the problem doesn’t recur.
Most of these other machines are also mobile, moving from job to job, so customers use the telematics primarily for geo-fencing, Hayward says, even continuing with the service past its initial complementary year subscription.
“We work with the customer if a unit wavers off their site,” Hayward says. “We will help them locate it.”
