In the Realm of the Sensor

JOST, a longtime supplier for Multiquip, has provided the poultry and transport company with a new Loc-Light fifth wheel sensor to trial.

Over the last four decades Multiquip has grown exponentially, becoming a national presence across four states and operating large fleets of hundreds of trucks and trailers which are essential to the distribution of poultry farming and the transportation of other goods.

Despite the company’s large size and scale of operations, Multiquip is first and foremost a family business.

Born from Steve and Lucy Mikosic’s purchase of a chicken farm in 1981, and officially formed as Multiquip Pty Ltd in 1983, the Mikosics and their four children have remained at the helm of the company through its many stages of constant development, remaining essential to its operations.

This family structure and influence seems to have strongly informed the company’s values, with safety Multiquip’s critical priority. This priority is emphasised by Daniel Mikosic, Workshop Manager at Multiquip.

“We really want to promote a high safety culture,” Daniel says. “For all our drivers, our staff, everyone in general and also to be able to provide the best customer service that we can for our customers.”

Multiquip’s rapid growth has partly been sustained by the partnerships that have helped add to its operational capacity.

The company’s steadfast commitment to safety, on that front, has necessitated it aligns with other organisations that hold similar values.

“We have roughly 300 Scanias which range from the G500 Scania up to the R770. We roughly have about 500 trailers in the fleet,” Daniel says.

“The majority of the trailers we have would be Muscat trailers, so all the tippers that we have are all Muscats.”

These vehicles take Multiquip’s products and services all over the country, and across a variety of terrain.

In addition to product distribution in metropolitan areas, the company’s trucks and trailers travel to and from chicken farms in regional areas along rural roads.

Multiquip’s own commercial hatchery is based in Picton, in regional New South Wales, where it hatches roughly 2 million birds a week.

Due to these long and potentially hazardous drives, the vehicles in the fleet must offer various safety features for drivers.

The Scania trucks, for example, are fitted with electronic parking brakes. These brakes automatically engage when the truck’s door is opened and can only be taken off through gear selection when the truck driver’s seatbelt is buckled.

“We’ve worked with Scania to get this in all our vehicles.” Daniel says. “This spec comes as a standard in a Multiquip vehicle.”

Other essential equipment pieces included in Multiquip’s Scania prime movers, like fifth wheels, landing legs and turntables, are supplied by heavy vehicle equipment specialist JOST.

In fact, Multiquip has partnered with JOST for much of its lifetime.

“We’ve been using JOST for a number of years,” Daniel says.

“From before I even started. It’s been a very long-standing relationship. JOST always supplied us with really good aftersales service, really good quality parts, and the availability of parts has always been very good. They understand what our core values are, and how our business works.”

JOST JSK37 CW Loc-Light sensor.

Under this partnership, the various pieces of equipment JOST supplies to Multiquip has been integral to bolstering the safety, quality, and efficiency of the company’s truck and trailers.

Most recently, JOST has supplied its latest safety provision device for Multiquip to trial: the Loc-Light. The Loc-Light is a sensor for JOST’s own manufactured fifth wheels, implemented to ensure that coupling is correctly completed, and to save time in the transport process as a result.

The sensor notifies drivers of unsuccessful coupling via the ‘Go/No-Go’ indicator, displayed as an LED light. A green light will indicate a successful coupling, while a red light, equipped with an audible sounder indicates an unsuccessful coupling.

Insecure or unsuccessful couplings have had disastrous consequences for commercial vehicle fleets, as large and valuable payloads can be lost, damaged and pose hazards to other drivers when disconnecting.

The vehicles in Multiquip’s large fleet undergo hundreds of deployments daily, so the need for correct coupling, it goes without saying, is of paramount concern.

“These trucks and trailers can be unhooked up to ten times in one night,” Daniel says. “So, there are a lot of times for the drivers to have to hook, unhook, and make sure everything is done correctly.”

Since receiving the Loc-Light in early August, Multiquip has applied it to one of their A-trailers for testing.

This A-trailer is part of the company’s live bird fleet, picking them up from farms and transporting them to processing plants. In this short period, Mulitquip has been very pleased with the device.

“We have received positive feedback from the drivers.” Daniel says. “It is easier for them to check the coupling, they feel more comfortable with having the extra feature, and knowing when it is 100 per cent hooked up properly.”

Multiquip has found the Loc-Light particularly useful in mitigating the serious risk associated with night-time coupling and during low visibility days.

The Loc- light sensors, helpfully illuminates the connection between both vehicles in otherwise difficult conditions.

“The work that is done, the majority of the time, is done at night.” Daniel says.

“The advantage that we’re finding with the Loc-Light system is that you can easily see where the driver is supposed to hook things up, because of the green light. But then another advantage is that there’s a light underneath where the driver can see the jaw and kingpin of the turntable, and they can make sure it is 100 per cent hooked up.”

Drivers are usually arriving at chicken farms during nighttime hours when there is no external light such as streetlamps or lights from the factory according to Daniel.

“You rely mainly on a phone light or a head torch or something equivalent,” he says.

The Loc-Light has allowed Multiquip to make further progress towards running its operations in the safest way possible, and upholding the company’s key tenet.

As yet another successful collaboration in a long partnership, Daniel Mikosic and Multiquip couldn’t be clearer on how they feel about JOST and the product.

“We’re really happy with what they are providing,” Daniel says.

The Loc-Light system has been developed for JOST’s fifth wheels.
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