Grain lorries, vehicles carrying seed cotton, tippers loaded with beet and refrigerated units taking fruit for export: the route from field to intake, body tipping, weight and time spent queueing. For your own vehicles and for the hired ones, of which there are always more in season.
During harvest a farm or a buying agent runs more trips in a few weeks than in the whole of the rest of the year. There are not enough of your own vehicles, so hauliers from neighbouring districts are brought in and the drivers are often complete strangers. Combines wait for lorries in the field, lorries wait in the queue at the elevator or the cotton gin, and every extra stop is time during which the harvest could already have been in store.
GPS monitoring of harvest haulage answers two questions. The first is whether everything loaded in the field reached the intake point. The second is where the time is going: in the field, on the road or in the queue. The answer to the first protects the harvest, the answer to the second shortens the campaign.
A farm in the Saatly district delivers seed cotton to a cotton ginning plant. It is several dozen kilometres from the far fields to the plant along rural roads. At the peak of picking, both the farm's own tippers and hired vehicles are on the haul.
At the end of last season the weight accepted by the plant turned out to be noticeably lower than what had been expected from the harvest. The losses were put down to moisture and trash. This season trackers and body tipping sensors were fitted to the vehicles.
In the very first week the report showed a pattern: two hired vehicles regularly stopped for 15 to 20 minutes at the same yard in a neighbouring village, and at that moment the body was partly raised. The conversation with the haulier after that was a short one. The other vehicles ran without stopping, and comparing the weights from their trips helped work out how much of the difference really was moisture.
In season, haulage losses almost always come from several sources at once:
A few hundred kilograms of grain or cotton is tipped off along the way. On a single vehicle it goes unnoticed; over a season it adds up to tonnes.
Graded grain is swapped en route for something cheaper. This matters most with hired transport, where the driver does not depend on the farm.
The haulier is paid per trip and per kilometre. Without a track, the number of trips can only be checked against the consignment notes, and those can have entries added.
Vehicles stand for hours at the elevator while combines in the field wait for transport to free up. Harvesting drags on and the grain either dries out or is caught by the rain.
A movement corridor is set for each field-to-elevator or field-to-plant direction. Leaving the road, stopping in an unplanned place or turning into a village off the route are all recorded and sent as a notification.
Stops shorter than a couple of minutes can be excluded from alerts so that nobody has to react to every traffic jam at a level crossing.
The strongest control comes when monitoring data meets weighbridge data. The weighbridge operator sees the vehicle number and where it came from: from the farm's field or from a neighbouring store. Accounts reconcile the number of trips on the track against the number of weighings.
The technical side depends on the weighbridge. If the weighbridge software can exchange data, we set up an integration through an API. If the weighbridge is old and works standalone, we reconcile by exporting reports: trips from the track and the weighing log are matched by vehicle number and time.
For fruit and vegetables carried for export, such as pomegranates from Goychay, apples from Guba and tomatoes from the south, the task is different: temperature becomes the main thing. There is more on the cold chain control page.
A hard-wired tracker, a body tipping sensor and, where needed, a fuel level sensor and axle load sensors. They work all year round and move to other haulage out of season.
A standalone tracker on a magnet or placed in the cab. No connection to the vehicle, handed over and returned against a signed record.
On the short field-to-threshing-floor leg the harvest is often carried by tractor. For these there is a tracker with a backup battery and a trailer tag, so you know which trailer was working.
A tracker, temperature sensors in the body and a door sensor. The temperature report for the trip goes to the consignee along with the paperwork.
Fitting trackers and sensors to your own vehicles and checking the ones left in place since last season.
Field outlines, intake points, field camps, permitted routes. It is enough to draw them once and update them as the crop rotation changes.
A condition: the vehicle only works with a tracker, and a trip with the tracker switched off is not paid for. Without that clause, control over hired vehicles does not work.
Notifications about route departures and body tipping have to reach someone who can be on the spot within half an hour. One dispatcher in the office is not enough for that.
For every trip of grain or cotton a farm usually has three figures, and they almost never agree down to the kilogram.
The trip track links these three points: the vehicle left a particular field, ran without stops with the body raised, and went onto the scales at a given time. If the track is clean and a difference remains, it is looked for in the quality of the grain and in the work of the weighbridge, not in the driver.
It is important not to confuse weight with a sensor estimate. An axle load sensor gives a guide figure with a margin of error that depends on the suspension, the road and the calibration. It is good for noticing that a vehicle left loaded and arrived noticeably lighter. Settlements with the haulier and delivery of the harvest still rely on the scales.
With a hired haulier, control only works when the rules are written down before the season. We suggest discussing several points with them and fixing them in the contract:
On the farm's side somebody has to be responsible for taking notifications during the season and able to go out to the spot. We set the system up and help work through a disputed trip using the data, but the decision to make a claim against the haulier is the farm's.
A pilot is best run on a single direction, for example the fields of one block to the elevator, and on part of the fleet: a few of your own vehicles plus hired ones with standalone trackers. Duration: the first two or three weeks of harvest.
What is needed from the farm: field outlines and intake points, a list of vehicles and drivers, the weighing log for the same period, and a contact responsible for notifications.
The acceptance criteria are agreed in advance, for example:
On the results you decide which vehicles and which directions to extend the control to next season.
Take the volume of harvest you move in a season and the difference between the weight at collection and the weight at intake that you currently write off as natural losses. If even part of that difference is not moisture but unloading along the way, that is the sum against which the cost of trackers is compared. You can test this before any large outlay with a pilot on part of the trips.
The second part of the calculation is time. If managing the queues means combines stop waiting for vehicles by even an hour a day, harvest finishes earlier and the crop is less at risk from the autumn rains. This benefit is harder to work out in advance, but during the season it shows up in the queue report.
Paying hauliers for actual trips and kilometres from the track also saves money, particularly if payment used to be based on consignment notes. We will price a kit for your own vehicles and standalone trackers for hired ones against your volume. Other solutions for agriculture are in the agricultural sector section.
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