United Cooperative is a full-service, farmer-owned business based out of Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, that supplies essential feed, agronomy, and fertilizer products used by farmers and growers throughout the Midwest.
Founded in 1936 as Dodge County Cooperative and renamed United Cooperative in 1998, the business has enjoyed continued growth and expansion over the years, primarily through mergers and acquisitions. Today, it boasts over 30,000 member-owner farmers.
Why Turn to Asset Tracking Software?
United Cooperative began using TrackAbout in March 2025 to enhance its ability to monitor, manage, and track its returnable assets, and to ensure it stayed compliant.
“The reason we wanted to go with TrackAbout was to satisfy the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requirements for container tracking,” says Kyle Krenz, Agronomy Operations Manager. “We can now track every time the container has been filled, who filled it, and with what product. We can keep a record of all that.”
“We have somewhere between 3,000-5,000 returnable assets, but I think we're going to find more as we start using TrackAbout. We’re tracking pretty close to 1,000 right now,” says Krenz.
“We have 17 different agronomy locations throughout Wisconsin, and every location has been tracking their own way, either on paper or a spreadsheet of some sort. The nice thing about TrackAbout is this is going to bring it all together in one program.”
Improved User Experience
Before using asset tracking software, United Cooperative’s reliance on physical paperwork and notetaking was cumbersome and prone to human error, says Krenz.
Having to manually capture information accurately from the many different containers moving about the facilities added to employees’ workloads and was even more difficult during busy periods.
Equally tricky was later trying to access those records to check the status and history of a specific asset, he continues. This would typically require extensive searches through binders of paperwork in the office, which was particularly time-consuming.
TrackAbout made the entire process far simpler, providing complete oversight of the company’s returnable assets – including what they are being used for, their history and movements, who has handled them, as well as detailed customer information.
Krenz says the software has also helped overcome another common challenge – lost, damaged, or detached labels. Because storage tanks are often exposed to the elements during mixing and loading, their labels can fade, wear, or peel away from the asset. In these cases, farmers may struggle to quickly identify the contents of a container or know what was stored in it previously.
United Cooperative’s containers are sorted by corn products, soybean products, and neutral products, says Krenz, so mistakenly placing them in the wrong container could be detrimental to the entire crop and prove extremely costly.
Thanks to TrackAbout, detailed records are now readily available, so there’s little chance of these types of errors occurring. Not only does the software significantly reduce the risk of contamination, but if there are ever issues, users can access the system and quickly look back through that container’s history to see exactly when the issue occurred, so it can be remedied as quickly as possible and future incidents can be avoided.
Such has been its success tracking the chemical tanks that Krenz has also been using the software to monitor other equipment as well. By attaching QR codes to its 100-strong fleet of liquid fertilizer trailers, for example, United Cooperative now has the reassurance that all will be returned after they have been loaned out to farmers. Krenz is also considering other applications in the future, including the tracking of returnable seed boxes that it sends out to growers.
A Simple Choice
The ease of using the new system meant improvements to processes and workflows were almost immediate. Implementation was painless, he adds, with TrackAbout’s team always on hand to offer help, advice, and support.
“It was really good,” he continues. “We had weekly meetings and asked a lot of questions. They were very helpful and worked hard to get it going for us as quickly as they could. It all went really well.”
By introducing the software so late in the farming season in March, during a busy delivery period, United Cooperative decided to introduce the software in two distinct phases. The initial roll out was focused on its main site in Beaver Dam, with other locations due to come onboard in the coming months.
“We wanted to run it for a year here at Beaver Dam first and get it set up the way we wanted it, figure out a process, and get it all streamlined. Then we’d roll it out to everyone else after we got a standard procedure in place,” he says.
“TrackAbout really had exactly what we were looking for. It covered all the bases; it looked like it was really user-friendly, using the mobile app to scan all the barcodes and QR codes we were using. It doesn’t add a lot of steps to what we were already doing. It's super easy to use.”
For others considering TrackAbout, Krenz says it should be an easy decision.
“I think they should give it a shot; there's definitely a lot of value in it,” he says. “It's user-friendly, and it's tracking exactly what we need it to track. I mean, they pretty much built the program to fit our needs. We're excited to have it. I think the ag industry is a good fit for TrackAbout.”
