Philip Contento taking 'The Gooses Golden Eggs'

The long-awaited Grand Final of RTITB's Fork Lift Operator of the Year 2013 Competition took place on Friday September 20th.

Since the announcement of the 10 finalists back in April, talk has inevitably turned to whether or not RTITB would be able to improve on 2011's Grand Final in 2013. This year's competition, sponsored by Toyota Material Handling UK, TNT Express Services UK and Ireland, and Calor Gas Ltd, and supported by Forkliftaction.com, B&B Attachments, and the FLTA set a very high standard at the qualifying heats held at IMHX 2013 at the NEC in March. Playing host to 300 hundred guests from across the warehousing and logistics industry, including the FTA, RHA and CILT, RTITB put on an event that justified the Operator of the Year Competition's status as one of the industry's leading operator competitions.

Simon Bottomley & Judge Simon Docherty at 'Fort Knox'

This year's Grand Final continued the 'gold' theme that has run throughout the competition since it began in November 2012. Consisting of 8 tests with the precious metal at their core, the Grand Final challenged each finalist's practical abilities and theory knowledge.

From 'Alchemy', in which each operator used a fork lift truck fitted with a barrel clamp to manoeuver full drums and pour their contents into empty barrels (preferably without spilling any contents), through to Fort Knox, which saw the competitors lift and move gold containers using a crane jib, this year's tests certainly required each finalist to dig deep and prove their top ten credentials. Colin Price, an experienced hand at the competition, finishing in second place in 2011, remarked that the tests were a lot harder this year. "RTITB have really upped their game!"

Anthony O'Reilly pouring materials for 'Alchemy'

At the conclusion of testing the day's achievements were celebrated at a lavish Gala Dinner held at the Telford Hotel and Golf Resort a short distance from RTITB headquarters. A number of prominent speakers took to the podium at the dinner, including RTITB's chairman Mike Williams and the Operations Director Laura Nelson; Simon Harper, Director of Operations at TNT Express Services UK and Ireland; and Tony Wallis, Sales and Marketing Director at Toyota Material Handling UK.

RTITB were delighted to welcome back to the event the evening's guest speaker, Jane Willis of the HSE's Cross-cutting Interventions Directorate. During her speech Mrs Willis paid tribute to the hard work and dedication of the finalists and congratulated RTITB and the competition sponsors for delivering a great event that highlighted the dangers of lift truck operation and celebrated the successes that can be enjoyed through quality training provision and best practice.

As guest speaker, Jane Willis also enjoyed the honour of announcing this year's champion, Ryszard Janus. Ryszard, who is employed by Wincanton and trained by Ceva Logistics Ltd., gave an emotional speech in which he thanked RTITB and the sponsors for giving himself and the other competitors the opportunity to show what they could do, before gratefully accepting the keys to his brand new Toyota Aygo.

As the evening wore on all were in general agreement that the event had been a triumph and, perhaps inevitably, thoughts began turning to the competition's return in 2016.

Forkliftaction is a proud supporter of RTITB Lift Truck Operator of the Year competition