One company in a family of them.
One company in a family of them, in Alberta. The family runs machines and crews and farms its own land. This one makes nothing that moves. It is the agreement, the register and the count that sit underneath somebody else's machine.
A tracked carrier with an equipment module, in mud and snow · The group's own render
Our own iron, our own land, our own crews.
The family has run heavy equipment and farmed its own ground in Alberta for thirty years. The crews that grade a corridor through bush in winter, feed cattle at first light and seed a field in spring are ours, and so are the machines they run.
So this instrument was not written by people who had watched a machine from a distance. It was written by people who pay operators, who have lost the good ones to retirement, and who have sat in the seat themselves. Both sides of the agreement are sides we have been on, and each side got its say.
What we know from the seat
A careful day leaves nothing to point at. The bank held, the line was not undercut, the machine came home. Nobody writes that down, and until now nobody could. The best operators are known for what does not happen.
What we know from the office
The person everyone asks for by name is the one you cannot replace with a hire, and when they retire, what they knew goes out the door with them. Wages paid for their time. Nothing ever paid for their method.
Machines are starting to learn what a person knows.
What a person knows about running a machine has never been property. It could not be sold, licensed or paid for twice, so nobody ever wrote an agreement for it. That is changing. A machine can now learn a way of working from a record of a person doing the job, and once it can, somebody will make the record.
The family looked at that and made a decision. If our operators' way of working is going to be learned by a machine, the people who own that knowledge should take part in what it earns, keep their name on it, and be able to take it back. So we wrote the instrument down first: the agreement, the record it rests on, and the count that pays. We did it before asking anyone outside the family to sign, and we wrote it so a person could read every clause without a legal department.
Our own crews and our own machines come first.
The first recordings come from people we already pay, on iron we already own. The procedure that admits or refuses a record runs on us before it runs on anyone else, so the awkward questions are found by us and not by you.
A tractor and silage wagon at the field edge · The group's own photograph
The agreement, the register and the count.
Nothing that moves. Everything that sits underneath the machine and says whose way of working is in it, who cleared it, and what is owed.
The agreement
The terms between the person whose way of working it is, the people who build from the record, and the owner whose machine runs it. Every clause is written so it would still be acceptable if the two sides swapped places.
The register
The record of what was recorded and under which consents, and whether each session was admitted or refused, with the reason named. What reaches a machine is a release, and a named person signs it.
The count
Every hour a way of working is in use, written from the moment a person on the crew chose it by name. The person it belongs to sees the count as it is written and is paid on it.
A way of working proposes. It never authorizes, and nothing of ours is wired to the machine while a person works.
What we will never do, whatever the paper says.
Each refusal below protects the reason a person would take part at all. Take one away and the rest stop meaning anything.
- Never buy a person's technique. It stays with them, in their career, whatever any paper says. We hold a record under licence and we never acquire it.
- Never rank anybody. Nobody here is picked from a list or scored against the next person. People are asked for by name, by somebody who has seen them work.
- Never sell a record on. A session is information about an identifiable person. It goes nowhere without their yes, and whoever licenses a way of working cannot pass it to anybody else.
- Never present ourselves as part of any other company. Even Steven is its own company with its own name. An instrument that counts the hours and pays the person has to stand on its own, apart from whoever makes the machine that runs it.
- Never wire anything to a machine while a person works. The recorder watches from outside it, connected to nothing, and comes off leaving no mark. What reaches a machine later is a release with a named person's signature on it.
By name, by one test, in plain words.
- 01Asked for by nameNobody on our crews is put forward because of a number. Somebody who has seen the person work asks for them by name, and the person says yes or no to each agreement separately. A no is honoured without emptying anything else.
- 02Fair is fairEvery clause has to pass one test: would it still be acceptable if the two sides swapped places? Where the answer is no, the clause is out. Every protection on the operator's side has a counterpart on ours holding it up, and the two columns are the same length.
- 03Plain wordsThe agreements are written to be read by the person signing them, at a kitchen table, without a legal department. If a clause needs a lawyer to explain what it does to you, it is rewritten until it does not.
The ranch, the feedlot, the earthworks and the winter corridors.
These are the places the instrument was written for and the places it is tried first. The photographs are ours, taken on our own ground, and the people in the seats are our own crews.
Our own people first, then everyone else.
What has happened so far, what has not, and what comes next, in order, is set out in full on its own page.
Talk to us.
If there is a hand on your crew you could not replace, or you are that hand, or you represent operators and want to see the terms before anyone signs, write to us.