Winners at Logistics Link Live

The final regional Heat of Combilift’s very popular 2008 Driver of the Year Competition took place on the first day of the Logistics Link Live Exhibition at Magna Park.

 Drivers from Timbmet, Promac, IDS and U-FIT:CO:UK took on an exacting course devised by Combilift together with leading training provider Mentor Training, which took around 30 minutes to complete and involved a number of tricky challenges. They also had to go through an inspection of a Combilift to prove their technical knowledge of the trucks.  

“These are all highly skilled drivers” said Paul Raymond of Combilift distributor Abex, who organised this event, “but they were really pushed to their limits. They had to negotiate a chicane, pick up and manoeuvre packs of timber in very tight aisles, position one stillage on top of another with the posts exactly in place, demonstrate the carousel facility of the trucks and place a pallet within a designated boundary – and all this in front of an audience!”  

Neil Beard from Mentor judged each driver’s performance for accuracy, and after totting up points he declared it to be a very close contest with only 2 points separating first and second places. Specialist timber supplier Timbmet sent two drivers from their Shellingford branch, who both finished in the top three; Keith Johnson gained third place and Alan Cooper was the overall winner. Second place went to Jon Howarth of Nuneaton based IDS. All finalists received a very striking glass trophy, and Alan will be battling it out with the two other regional winners for the overall title of   Driver of the Year which will take place at Combilift’s headquarters in Ireland in September.