Two drivers named ‘HGV heroes’ in Microlise awards23 May 2017

Robert Brown from Eddie Stobart and John Harrington from DHL were recognised as ‘HGV Heroes’ in the 2017 Microlise Driver of the Year Awards in May.

The HGV Hero award recognises the important work that drivers do in the community and is given to a driver who has performed a heroic deed to help a member of the public while carrying out their day-to-day work.

John Harrington of DHL helped to save the life of an elderly gentleman suffering a heart attack after being flagged down.

And Brown helped a car crash victim at the scene of an accident. On 21 December 2016 at around 5pm Brown was heading to Dagenham when he saw a drunk driver crash into another car containing a young lady and her mother. Brown attended the scene and comforted the young driver, who was trapped in the car, and supported her neck, which had sustained injuries in the collision. He remained with her for more than two hours while fire fighters cut off the car’s roof and pulled her from the wreck.

Despite being hailed as a hero, Brown remained modest, saying “It was nothing. I was more proud of the young lady, who didn’t lose it throughout the harrowing experience.”

David Pickering, Eddie Stobart’s chief operating officer, said: “We are very proud of Rob for the role he played in what was a very difficult and dangerous situation. He put the safety and care of others in distress as his first priority.”

During the Microlise conference, Samworth Brothers’ Rafal Kolanko was named the 2017 Microlise Driver of the Year Award winner.

Following a process involving over 120,000 HGV drivers, Kolanko was shortlisted and subsequently won the medium distance category, featuring drivers who regularly undertake a mixture of journeys and typically cover between 31,000 – 60,000 miles per year. In securing the overall prize, he also saw off competition from shortlisted and winning drivers in both the short and long categories, confirming his position as one of the UK’s leading drivers.

The short, medium and long categories are based on data collected by Microlise telematics units. Now in their third year, these telematics-based awards are defined by analysing anonymous data assessed against a range of criteria, using a process defined by the University of Nottingham’s Advanced Data Analysis Centre.

The short distance category was won by Michael Young of Culina, with the long-distance category won by Peter Jones of Chamberlain Transport. Chamberlain Transport also won the Driver Excellence award, as a result of having the highest proportion of their drivers in the top 1,000 based on analysis of the telematics data.

Author
Will Dalrymple

Related Companies
DHL Express (UK) Ltd
Eddie Stobart Ltd
Microlise Ltd

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