Asset Tracking Improves Employee Safety, Minimizes Theft

By Brian Albright, Field Technologies

R.D. Offutt Co. gains fleet visibility through real-time vehicle tracking.

R.D. Offutt Co. is a potato farming operation based in Fargo, ND. The company operates farms in seven states and grows thousands of acres of potatoes each year. With such a large operation spread across multiple geographies, keeping track of farm equipment can be quite a challenge. While it seems as if it would be difficult to lose track of something the size of a tractor, R.D. Offutt’s operations are large enough that finding a vehicle on a farm with thousands of acres of land is difficult.

That lack of visibility raises safety issues, as well as creating opportunities for theft. “Some of the new fields we are working on are in very low population areas, so someone could come in at night and steal a tractor or a truck, and we’d never know until the next day,” says Barry Bowers, field technology manager at R.D. Offutt Co. “We were becoming concerned more and more with theft and safety.”