Shell Commercial Fuels South Africa announced the winners of their 2017 Trucker of the year competition recently. The event, held at the Riverside Sun hotel in Vanderbijlpark, included entertainment by the exquisite electric string quartet The Muses and internationally renowned SA comedian Kedibone Mulaudzi.
“We were honoured to have the Executive Mayor of Sedibeng, Cllr Busisiwe Modisakeng and the Hon. Mohatla Tseki, Member of Roads & Transport Portfolio Committee, Gauteng Province join us in recognising the stars who make the Shell Branded distributor network the success it is today”, says Shell Downstream SA Commercial Fuels Marketing Executive Millicent Mulelu, “The evening was a great way to end a hard year’s work and we look forward to the new year and what it will bring.”
The competition itself consisted of 5 challenging events that included: first aid and firefighting handling tests, a written theory exam, completing an obstacle course and on road driving assessment. The events took place over two days and final winners were announced as follows-
- First prize of R15 000 was awarded to – Pieter Jacobs (Sebokeng Fuels)
- Second prize of R10 000 was awarded to – Terrence Geduld (Moov)
- Third prize of R5 000 was awarded to – Lionel Bergman (Triangle Petroleum)
“The Shell Branded Distributor Driver of the year competition is a Shell initiative aimed at developing excellent driving skills from our distributors. Every month our driver’s performance is tracked using a proactive and reactive criterion. Positive and negative scores are monitored to ensure that we have a full understanding on where corrective intervention is needed”, says Shell SA Health, Security, Safety and Environment (HSSE) manager Imraan Ally.
Drivers that do not perform well are re-trained by the driver trainers to reinforce the right behaviours and only the top two drivers from each distributor enter the finals.
“The initiative is in line with our strategy of Goal Zero that promotes no harm to people, the environment and assets”, says Nischal Sancho Shell SA Trading and Supply Products Manager, “Our mission is to foster a culture that ensures that each of our distributor drivers go home safely to their families, and to help reduce the carnage that occurs daily on our roads. As of October 2017, our results have shown that we have achieved 1764 days of Goal Zero with our distributors and 1036 days of Goal Zero results for products.”
The Shell Branded distributor model is Shell’s extended route to market where small -mostly small medium micro enterprises – are licensed franchisees of Shell who buy and sign into Shell values and ethos.
Sancho adds, “We have 10 of these across the country, and they are each represented by 2 employees for the driver competition initiative, which has been held once a year since 2014. We trust that this key initiative, which is a very important value proposition to all our stakeholders alike, will go a long way in ensuring that not only our drivers go home safely, but that the communities within which we serve are also safe”.
