Transportation and Warehousing

Frank McCarthy Haulage builds a connected operating system and cuts invoice queries by 70% with Samsara

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Meet Frank McCarthy Haulage

25 EMPLOYEES

20 SAMSARA-ENABLED VEHICLES

100+ TRAILERS

The Challenge

Running a modern haulier on phones, paper, and guesswork

Frank McCarthy Haulage is a family-owned haulier based near Cork Port, moving everything from shipping containers and bulk loads to modular houses and roof trusses across Ireland and the UK. Over the past decade, Director Gary McCarthy has grown the business from five trucks to twenty — and built it on a belief that a small operator should be able to compete with much larger ones if it runs sharper.

But that belief was running into a wall. The day-to-day operation was held together by phone calls, spreadsheets, and tribal knowledge. Planners lost hours chasing drivers for updates and customers for answers, with no easy way to know where a truck actually was or when it would arrive. An incumbent telematics system did little more than watch where vehicles were, with reporting described as prehistoric.

Disputes were the worst of it. When a customer claimed a truck was late or had damaged a loading bay, there was no evidence to push back with. Driving behaviour was invisible until something went wrong. And while revenue was tracked carefully, true job-level margin was a monthly guess based on revenue in versus money out.

Samsara changed how we run the fleet day-to-day because it replaced assumptions with evidence. Now every decision is faster, every dispute is shorter, and every job has a margin.

Gary McCarthy

Director Frank McCarthy Haulage

The Solution

One connected system for operational truth

Frank McCarthy Haulage rebuilt the business around a connected stack with Samsara as its foundation. Vehicle Telematics and Dash Cams capture the live reality of every vehicle, integrated with Qargo for job execution and a structured cost model for commercial control. Five connected solutions now give the team a single source of truth for what every truck is doing, what every job costs, and what to change next time.

The result is a 20-truck haulier operating with the discipline of a much larger fleet, and the agility of a much smaller one.

Vehicle Telematics

The visibility to track and control idling

Idling was one of the largest sources of avoidable fuel waste in the business. It was also one of the hardest to address because drivers had no real sense of what it actually cost. Samsara made the cost visible at driver level, and behaviour shifted without a single disciplinary conversation.

Across a 10-month measurement period, the fleet's baseline idle rate fell from 15% to 9% — a 40% relative reduction. That translated into 7,708 litres of fuel saved and an estimated €10,610 in cost savings.

Two white Scania trucks with blue FMC Haulage livery parked side by side under a cloudy sky.

Video-based safety

A protective shield that changed driver culture

Before Samsara, disputes were a matter of one side's word against another's. AI Dash Cams replaced that with timestamped evidence to protect drivers from false third-party claims, give managers something concrete to coach on, and turn technology that drivers initially resisted into one they actively rely on.

Since rollout, harsh driving events have fallen 42% across the fleet (from 11.02 to 6.42 per 1,000km), the average fleet safety score has climbed from 74 to 82, and speeding in known risk zones — yard approaches and urban delivery areas — is down 48%. Several individual drivers have transformed their performance entirely, with one improving his safety score from 32 to 89.

A dark grey FMC Haulage lorry cab parked in a yard, with chrome wheels, beside a blue industrial building.

Connected Workflows & Routing

Replacing paper pursuits with digital workflows

The single biggest day-to-day change at Frank McCarthy Haulage isn't the safety data or the fuel savings. It's the elimination of constantly chasing drivers, customers, and paperwork that used to consume the planning team's day.

With live tracking, geofenced arrival times and integrated job records flowing between Samsara and Qargo, planners have recovered 15 hours per week previously lost to manual pursuits. The percentage of jobs completed with full digital proof has climbed to 90%, and invoice queries are down 70%.

Three white Scania trucks with blue FMC Haulage livery parked in a yard under a cloudy sky.

Open Platform Integration

Turning data into decision and engagement tools

With Samsara providing a wealth of data at his fingertips, Gary put it to work by exporting into AI tools to build custom-coded fuel dashboards, AI-generated driver-coaching podcasts and explainer videos that present each driver's own data back to them — in a format they'll actually engage with.

The result is a closed loop where operational data feeds into commercial decisions, coaching content, and continuous improvement. All built without a dedicated IT team.

Two white and blue FMC Haulage Renault trucks parked side by side under a blue sky.

The Road Ahead with Samsara

Operational truth becomes predictive intelligence

Frank McCarthy Haulage has spent the past stretch establishing operational truth. The next phase is predictive — using the same data to anticipate what's coming, not just record what's happened.

Predictive maintenance is the priority. With smart trailer trackers, fault code analysis and engine behaviour data, the goal is a fully planned intervention schedule that catches issues weeks before they become roadside breakdowns. This would turn unplanned downtime into a metric the business actively manages down to zero.

Gary is also continuing to push the AI-generated coaching content further, building out the podcast and video library so every driver receives personalised, listenable feedback as a standard part of how the business communicates performance. And as customer expectations evolve, the same Samsara data is being prepared to feed directly into customer-facing reporting. Operational evidence will become a value-added service that smaller hauliers rarely offer.

For a family business approaching its sixth decade, the ambition is simple: keep proving that connected operations isn't a tracking system. It's a competitive advantage.

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