David Kiel, The Mobile Mechanic

David, could you tell me about yourself?

I work as a mobile heavy diesel mechanic based in Yeoval, New South Wales. I’ve been a mechanic for almost 25 years.

How did you come across the app?

I came across it through social media. As soon as I saw it I was interested because I’d always had trouble keeping track of everything with old school paper logs. The ease of managing things digitally was really appealing to me and I’ve been using it since then to keep track of the machines that I regularly maintain. It's really good to use and it's great to have that service history on hand but also to have each machine’s part information handy. It's so useful to be able to instantly look up what parts fit what machine instead of having to trawl through old books or to try and find random notes I’ve written down somewhere.

I also use the app to generate a PDF of services to send with my invoices so my clients have that comprehensive record of how their machine has been maintained as well.

What machines do you work on most of the time as a heavy diesel mechanic?

I'm actually working a fair bit on some road plant equipment at the moment. The kinds of machines that are fixing up tarred roads and the like, a lot of heavy caterpillar machinery. But then in the second stance, I’ll find myself fixing a side-by-side on a farm. I cover a broad range. A lot of it, I suppose you could say it’s off-road machinery. I do some service work for certain mines as well, which is heavy earth-moving equipment.I’m a bit of a jack of all trades so I often find myself working on a tractor, a motorbike, a car, a truck and a loader all on the same job. It keeps things interesting that's for sure.

Is there any particular feature of the app that you find especially handy?

Being able to generate a PDF for clients is a really good idea. Obviously I have descriptions of the work I’ve undertaken on my invoices but being able to give that added detail gives everyone a little more peace of mind and I know a lot of people are printing those off and keeping records of their machines maintenance. Now I’m also bringing some of my bigger clients onto the app as well so their day to day operators can access the information and share more information with me as well like anything that might be wrong or issues they’re finding with the machine.