Case Study:
MH Equipment Company

MH Equipment is a full-service material handling dealership that sells, rents, and services industrial equipment for clients ranging from local warehouses to major logistics operations. What sets them apart is their extensive multi-state footprint paired with a deep commitment to stewardship, operating as an authorized dealer for premium brands like Hyster and Yale, while delivering customized fleet management and maintenance programs. These comprehensive solutions—backed by over 70 years of regional expertise and a massive team of certified technicians—are designed to minimize warehouse downtime and maximize operational efficiency.

The 2010 Challenge

MH Equipment approached OneHat to build a custom, mission-critical web application designed to analyze and manage tens of thousands of forklifts and heavy machinery. At the time, the company was drowning in disjointed Excel spreadsheets, coupled with a legacy business system that simply could not handle their scaling needs for Preventive Maintenance (PM) scheduling. They needed an enterprise-grade platform capable of tracking and processing hundreds of millions of operational records.

The Solution: Fleet App 1

OneHat built a robust fleet management application engineered to ingest massive amounts of raw data and aggregate it into highly digestible, actionable intelligence. Key functionalities included:

• Core Operations: Comprehensive tracking of equipment profiles, PM scheduling, real-time meter readings, work orders, parts, and labor.
• Fleet Analytics: Real-time management dashboards, animated data visualizations, and detailed operational spend analysis.
• Financials: Visibility into fleet rentals, long-term contracts, and leases, paired with customizable Excel reporting engines.
• Telemetry: Automated telemetry data ingestion from multiple hardware providers.
• Notifications: Automated condition-based alerts.

Measurable Business Impact

Today, fleet managers and administrators rely on the platform daily to drive operational success:

• Efficiency Gains: Automating complex, customizable Excel reporting saved administrative staff countless hours of manual compilation each week.
• Downtime Reduction: By gaining absolute visibility over PM schedules, MH significantly reduced unexpected equipment downtime for both their internal fleet and their end customers.
• Data Scale & Performance: The platform smoothly processes hundreds of millions of historical data records, proving that high-volume enterprise data can remain fast, accessible, and performant.

The 2023 Challenge & Modernization

By 2023, the core landscape of workplace technology had shifted. The original Fleet App was engineered before the mobile revolution; consequently, it lacked a responsive UI, faced modern browser compatibility hurdles, and relied on a legacy code framework. MH Equipment once again tasked OneHat with completely modernizing the platform to serve as its long-term digital backbone.

Technical Architecture

To future-proof the ecosystem, OneHat reimagined the software from the ground up:

• The Stack: The modernized application leverages React Native, enabling a single, unified codebase to power both web and mobile distributions. The interface is completely responsive, scaling seamlessly from small smartphone screens to expansive multi-monitor desktop setups.
• The Migration Strategy: Because the platform is entirely mission-critical to daily operations, a hard cutover was not an option. OneHat implemented a phased, concurrent migration strategy. Fleet App 1 and Fleet App 2 run simultaneously in production, allowing individual departments to transition seamlessly over time with zero operational downtime.

Conclusion

The Fleet Apps continue to see daily to weekly usage by hundreds of employees in production. By bridging legacy scale with modern architectural design, OneHat delivered a mission-critical platform that remains a rock-solid foundation for MH Equipment's future growth.