Good to see the return of the Van Driver of the Year competition, from the FTA (recently rebranded to Logistics UK)
Looking to recognise the UK’s very best van drivers.
Now in its seventh year, the competition was launched at the start of March. With entries being accepted from March 16.
Twenty finalists will compete through a series of tasks on Saturday June 13 at Ashby-de-la-Zouch (postponed to 21 November due to COVID)
Van driver of the year – why it’s no joke
While some will make sad jokes about such awards, they miss the value they bring to professions and business communities.
In this case one which is:
(a) vital to the way we now live
(b) working to raise standards for all of our benefit.
The three areas of the award – safety, efficiency and compliance – all work to foster a mature and professional approach to driving and customer service. In what are predominately crowded urban driving environments.
Van driving is only going to increase
This is important now and will only become more so as our lifestyles shift more and more to online shopping.
With its associated need for organisations to give focus to the management of the last mile and multiple small deliveries. Skilled, risk aware and risk managed van driving, as a business practice must become the norm.
Kevin Green, Director at FTA, put it like this:
“Van drivers are required to be safe, efficient and compliant.
The growth of vans for varied trade use such as plumbing or floristry, together with the rise of internet shopping, has resulted in van drivers playing an increasing role in the UK economy.
FTA looks forward to recognising and rewarding these outstanding individuals who can demonstrate excellent manoeuvring, observation and concentration skills, as well as their ability to work safely and efficiently in line with best practice.”
Van driver of the year? We can only agree.
At CMS we can only agree with the goals of the Van Driver of the Year competition.
Through our work in helping leading organisations identify and reduce their risk in running van fleets, both in the UK and abroad. We are only too aware of the challenges drivers and organisations face each and every day.
Route planning, crowded delivery schedules, traffic problems, wrong paperwork etc all combine to add to the risk factors faced by van drivers.
Anything that can be done to alleviate that risk, be it the software based risk management solution that CMS offers, or improvement in the standard of van driving by creating focus points such as the Van Driver of the Year competition, can only be good.
Given what we work on, the problems we help organisations solve and the incidents we see van drivers dealing with. All of us at CMS welcome the FTA’s work in this area, and the expression of this with the 2020 Van Driver of the Year competition.
After all, it can only help to, as we say, manage risk better, make the working world safer.
