Mutual Harvesting eased into its first year with GeoAg Solutions and incorporated the CitriTrack™ system into one of their crews. Past experiences with other programs similar to this, that could not get off the ground and lacked customer support caused Mutual Harvesting to be somewhat skeptical of success with CitriTrack™ and HarvestPay™. Carson Futch, President of Mutual Harvesting stated, “In the beginning I was concerned, as was the operator, that the system would slow harvesting down.”

However, within a very short time after being introduced to CitriTrack™ the crew leader was comfortable with the system. “My crewleader said he only expected to be able to pick about 4 loads per day using the system. We were pleasantly surprised when we were able to meet our 3,500 boxes per day allocations during Valencia Season. Our expectations were exceeded.”

Another concern for Mutual Harvesting was creating a return on their investment in the CitriTrack™ system. Carson Futch states “We have overcome the cost factor by selling the value added services of providing yield maps to our customers. We also provide our customers with a much higher level of Wage and Hour compliance assurance.” This feature is important to growers because they are accountable for their harvesting contractors and they must ensure that the pickers are meeting State and Federal labor requirements including minimum wage standards. Mutual also benefits from a cost-sharing program with their employee leasing service. “Our employee leasing provider likes the streamlined way we provide them with payroll data because it saves them time and money during processing. They incentivise us by adjusting our administrative fees” says Futch.

Mutual has also benefited from the system’s ability to quickly generate payroll and worker information. The old method of waiting for payroll sheets to be faxed or delivered to the office slowed down payroll. With HarvestPay™, crews can be hours away from the office and send in their work information without having to travel there. This saves a lot of time and money typically spent on collecting payroll information. Carson Futch pointed out that his crewleader really likes CitriTrack™ and HarvestPay™ because “Crewleaders typically spend hours balancing payroll sheets, trip tickets and/or punch cards. CitriTrack™ has eliminated much of the time involved for the crewleader.”

Pat Long, Payroll Administrator for Mutual Harvesting says, “the greatest thing about this program is that I don’t have to wait until the end of the week to do payroll. The majority of the payroll is complete by the end of the pay period. New workers show up immediately and I can work from home.” Long also notes “Because of the volume of fruit we move, it is very common for a goat driver to not count a tub of fruit or mis-allocate it to the wrong picker, the CitriTrack™ system eliminates a lot of errors”.

Another key to success was GeoAg Solutions’ ability to be flexible and work with their customers. “We told GeoAg Solutions what we thought might help streamline the operation even more and they quickly provided us with a solution” says Futch. “Geoag Solutions has a good product and they provide great service.”