With a history that dates back to the 1950s, the family owned and operated Woods Group services Australia’s agricultural industry, including farming, production through to transport.
Woods Transport is one of six businesses within the group. Its main operations are centred around container movements to port for export and stock feed delivery into feedlots, servicing southern Queensland and northern NSW.
Depots are located in Goondiwindi, Toowoomba and Brisbane; and the sizeable fleet is made up of 40 prime movers and over 100 trailers.
Since 2016, Woods Transport has used LSM TyreGuard with integrated Tyre Monitoring Systems (TMSystem) across much of its fleet of prime movers, A-doubles and AB-triple road trains and container loaders.
“It’s been fitted across our road trains and stock feed trailers. The system enables us to identify potential issues and problems prior to them becoming major. LSM TyreGuard can help prevent things like flat tyres causing blow outs, anything causing added friction from a misaligned or broken axle, brake lock-up and failed brake boosters, to a fire in axle hubs,” explained Woods Transport compliance manager Anne Lipp.
“It’s all about prevention and being able to monitor and identify issues so you’re not having costly breakdowns, equipment damage, delays or time off the road.”
The LSM FSM Fleet Safety & Tracking Manager enables remote tyre monitoring, providing the dispatch team with online alerts, analysis and reporting data, and fast and accurate tyre management information, helping the team to ensure compliance.
The LSM TyreGuard MTR360 Multi-Trailer Combination TMSystem is fitted to Woods Transport’s road train fleet. While the LSM TyreGuard CE360 Heavy Machine TMSystems is also fitted to numerous container loaders too.
The system provides tracking and live monitoring. “You can actually monitor the pressures and temperatures from your computer in the office, as well as the driver seeing it all on the display screen in their prime mover. We have text and email set up so the system can send an alert whenever it identifies a problem. As well as identifying the truck, it also tells us the wheel position the problem relates to,” said Lipp.
She added that quite recently, the system came into its own, avoiding what could have otherwise been a costly problem. “A high temperature alert came through for the dolly and the driver received an alert in the cabin. He pulled over to check the axle hub and we were able to take a spare piece of equipment out so we could remove the load and pressure from the damaged dolly. It meant we could have the dolly repaired before it resulted in a full failure or full axle replacement. We were able to bring that dolly into the workshop and have it repaired without causing too many major dramas.
“It’s an easy system to work with and identify where issues may occur. If the system reports an issue somewhere, it’s usually easily identified and repaired with interchangeable parts.”
LSM also offers the TyreGuard Smartlink Tool/Tablet, an offline tool for manual inspections, programming, maintenance and off-line storage and analysis of tyre pressure and temperature data, especially where telemetry is not available.
In addition to the usability and convenience of its systems, LSM Technologies also prides itself on its high levels of customer service too.
Lipp added, “LSM Technologies have been very good to deal with. They offer great service, including providing training to people on site, as well as technicians to help us understand the system if required.”