‛We make it happenʼ is Austrack’s motto, and rightly so. The company is passionate about providing the pipeline industry with quality equipment paired with an unparalleled customer service.
Good customer service can mean many things, such as quality, trust, fairness, price, speed, efficiency, knowledge, responsiveness.
For Austrack Business Development Manager Mike O’Reilly, it involves all these attributes and sometimes a whole lot more.
“If it means anything at all it surely means delighting and surprising the customer,” he said.
“It’s all about going beyond reasonable customer expectations and delivering a result that is beyond what was expected, and understanding what the customer wants is generally the key and is always the starting point.”
According to O’Reilly. sometimes it is even about helping the customer understand exactly what it is that they need, because sometimes they don’t quite know.
“Austrack Equipment prides itself on its customer service and it is not alone,” he said.
The facility in which Austrack operates is a space where heavy machinery is hired out, often to meet impossibly tight deadlines, mostly delivered to remote, sometimes challenging locations.
It is a space where availability, reliability and performance intersect.
“Getting it right all the time is almost impossible,” O’Reilly said.
“But getting it right will always be the Austrack ambition.”
Perhaps the reasons for that, according to him, is because the team at Austrack listens to its customers, and they bring a huge amount of knowledge and experience of the industry in which it operates.
“That is a formidable combination of capabilities to ensure satisfactory customer outcomes,” he said.
A relatively new customer who had visited the Austrack yard in Brisbane to arrange delivery of a couple of SafeVac Vacuum Lifters for a water pipeline job in North Queensland shared his frustration with Austrack Principal Michael Benson.
He had not been able to source a sand hopper with some very specific performance requirements and the unit he was after is not readily available.
Benson’s answer was short and simple: “Leave it with me, I’ll see what I can do.”
This equipment is essentially one-off, purpose-built, customised and finding one requires someone with extensive machinery knowledge and a significant industry contact base to locate the exact machine needed to do the job.
Benson succeeded in finding not one, but two specimens of the elusive sand hopper, however getting the equipment ready for its next project was another challenge for Austrack.
“Even after it has been sourced it will almost certainly involve a significant refit and customisation to get it ready for its next role. So, finding one is only the start of the solution for the customer,” O’Reilly said.
“But Austrack has that requirement covered as well.”
Under the expert supervision of Operations Manager Dylan Gamble, if the sand hopper can be found, it can be reinstated to pristine condition.
After an extensive refit at the Austrack yard scoped and overseen by Gamble, the much sought after sand hopper was ready to add grunt, capacity, and cost savings to ensure the Austrack customer hit its project goals.
Its new home for the foreseeable future is on the Haughton Pipeline Project for the Townsville City Council which involves the installation of 1800DN Rubber ring glass reinforced plastic pipe.
“This specialised unit is already kicking goals,” O’Reilly said.
“Moving at a steady pace this behemoth with a hopper capacity of 60 tonnes and a discharge conveyor that dispenses its precious bedding sand with unerring precision, exactly where it’s required for backfilling the trench.”
According to him, the operation is smooth and efficient and the expensive sand wastage that is usually associated with conventional backfill is eliminated.
The savings on sand is only half the story as backfilling from the hopper also reduces both machine and manpower requirements.
“Saving money and time in any project is a deadly result,” O’Reilly said.
“The story of the sand hoppers is just one of the many happy endings engineered by Austrack for its customers by moving beyond the usual and providing the kind of customer service experience that can be taken to the bank.”
O’Reilly said no matter what the requirement is whether it is for excavators, padders, loaders, dozers, telehandlers, crawler carriers, tractors, backhoes, dumpers, moxys, or a mesmerising array of special attachments, Austrack can weave the same kind of magic as it did for the customer with the sand hoppers.
“Everything begins and ends with our customers,” Benson said.
“The power and essence of it is that everyone in our business has a clear understanding that the only reason for our existence is the customers who choose to deal with us.”
For Benson, there’s no better purpose than serving Austrack customers with the best equipment, wherever and whenever.
“The satisfaction we deliver to our customers essentially is what drives our growth and guarantees our success, and we never take that for granted.”
For more information, visit austrackequipment.com.au
This article featured in the May edition of The Australian Pipeliner.
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