Telematics for a rental fleet of aerial work platforms
How a Malaysian machinery dealer and rental company tracked engine hours, fuel and battery condition on 70+ Genie lifts — the data foundation for predictive maintenance.
A machinery dealer that rents out its fleet
Founded in 2005, the company is an official distributor of leading heavy machinery brands, including Genie. It sells machinery in Malaysia and rents it out to industrial and construction firms, logistics and warehousing companies and building renovation businesses.
The monitored fleet includes Genie telescopic boom lifts (S series), articulated boom lifts (Z series) and scissor lifts (GS series), with Kubota, Deutz, Ford and Perkins diesels of 10–99 kW.
Maintenance by usage, across hundreds of sites
Under the rental contracts, the company is responsible for maintenance. But daily operating hours and the number of lifts vary hugely from site to site, so servicing by calendar doesn’t work — and with lifts spread across hundreds of sites, tracking each one by hand was impossible.
Management wanted remote monitoring of every unit: engine hours and speed, fuel consumption and fuel remaining, ignition on/off, on-board voltage and GPS position.
One CAN network per lift
Each lift received a DUT-E fuel level sensor (fuel monitoring plus engine time in idle, optimal and overload modes), a MasterCAN DAC converter that digitises analogue signals — RPM, boom position from the joystick relay, ignition key — and a CANUp telematics gateway, all linked through S6 technology over CAN J1939.
The gateway sends reports over 2G/3G/LTE, raises events on refuelling, draining or leaving a geozone, sends e-mail/SMS alarms without a server, and supports remote diagnostics.
More than 70 lifts now report operating time, fuel consumption, fuel remaining and battery / on-board voltage in real time, so the company can plan service and deployment far better. With reliable machine data as the first step towards predictive maintenance, operating costs fell by 10%. The company plans to equip its entire fleet.
Task → Solution → Result
Servicing a scattered rental fleet
Lift usage varies by site; calendar maintenance and manual tracking didn’t work.
DUT-E + MasterCAN DAC + CANUp
Fuel, engine, boom and battery data on one CAN network, reported over cellular.
−10% operating costs
70+ lifts monitored live; predictive maintenance under way.
All necessary equipment was easy to install on MEWPs without changing control elements. Thanks to monitoring system installation, fleet management automation became possible – now we can monitor online: status of battery/on-board network, fuel consumption, location of MEWPs.
Company representative · Rental company, Malaysia
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