Operators Club Final 2019
The Operators Club has been running within Volvo Construction Equipment for 21 years, yet this year was the first time that the finals were held in Eskilstuna, Sweden, the home of Volvo CE.
Lewis Jarman and Phil Port placed third and fourth in the GB Operators Club heats at Hillhead, so both qualified to compete against 27 other finalists from 13 countries in this tough competition.
After arriving in Sweden on Friday afternoon, the finalists and their partners (Flo and Claire) travelled to the Volvo Customer Centre, where they were treated to a pre-dinner twilight demo show. After dinner, the challenges were revealed and each finalist chose their number to start the competition. Phil chose 14 and Lewis would be the final competitor to try his luck after choosing number 27; both were just relieved not to have the number 1 spot!
It was an early start on Saturday, with a 7.30am pick-up. After a demonstration from the Volvo team on the first competition, the final got underway.
ROUND 1 The first challenge, titled ‘Time Square’, was to drive an A45G
hauler through a slalom course and then into a square. They had to turn the hauler around (however they felt best) and then return through the slalom course to cross the finish line. Penalties would be incurred for knocking any tennis balls from the logs that lined the square, or that were balanced along the slalom course. Phil was first up and was cool, calm and collected. He completed the challenge in a good time of 72 seconds, with no penalties. Lewis was the final competitor to take to the machine. He performed really well under the pressure, and completed the course in an impressive 59 seconds. This put Lewis into 5th place, while Phil placed 11th; a great place to be at the start of the competition.
ROUND 2 The next challenge was ‘The Swap’. This involved swapping the
position of three pallets using an L70H Wheel Loader fitted with pallet forks. Competitors could swap the pallets in any order they liked, and a few different tactics were used by the Operators. Those who finished last in the first challenge competed first in the next, so Phil and Lewis had a while to wait to plan which methods they would use to take on this challenge.
One pallet was empty, the second had a pipe with a football balanced on it and the third had a bucket of water on it. Penalties were incurred if the football fell from the pipe or if water was spilt from the bucket, as well as if anyone knocked over any of the tennis balls that were balanced on logs dividing up each bay.
Phil went first and finished the challenge in a quick time. He did however spill 30ml of water, which incurred a 30 second time penalty (10 seconds per 10ml spilt), so his final time was confirmed as 1.52. Lewis was up next and was nervous, as he had never driven a Wheel Loader before. After some instructions on how to operate the machine, he was off. There was clearly no need for his nerves, as Lewis took to the machine like a rubber duck would take to the water in the bucket that he was moving, and completed the challenge in a time of 1.41.
At the end of the two rounds, Lewis was in 6th place and Phil was in 12th.
ROUND 3 After a short break for lunch and an opportunity for Operators to
look at machines in the demo ground, Phil and Lewis competed in ‘Flip It’. In this challenge, the competitors had to flip a tyre into the bucket of an EC180E Excavator, and then put the tyre on top of a barrel. They had to repeat this three times. If a tyre was dropped after an attempt was made to place it on the barrel, it was out of action. If more than one tyre was dropped, the challenge could not be completed and maximum time, plus any penalties, would be added together to give a final time. Once the challenge was completed on the EC180E, it then had to be repeated on an EW220E.
Once again, Phil was up first and went for a ‘smoothly does it’ approach. He finished both tries in a good time. Lewis took to the EW220E first, and completed the challenge in a really fast time. But disaster struck on his second attempt in the EC180E, as he dropped the first tyre that he tried to stack onto the barrel. The next one went on fine, but the third fell from the barrel. This meant that he could not finish the challenge, so received maximum time plus all of the penalties that he had accumulated, which put him out of the competition.
Only the top ten went through to the final, and an anxious wait followed to see if Phil had done enough to make it through.
THE FINAL With his calm and steady approach, Phil had made it to ninth
place and was called up straight away to take part in the final. The challenge used a broomstick attached to an EC160E to push wooden blocks from a grid. They had two minutes to push out as many blocks as they could. Phil pushed through 20 blocks which, sadly, wasn’t enough to improve his position, and so he remained in ninth place overall.
The top five from the first round then competed in a Super Final of the same challenge. Last year’s winner, Othmar Pletzer from Austria, had made it through to the Super Final and pushed through an impressive 31 blocks. Bendt Risom from Denmark took the top spot from Othmar, after pushing through 33 blocks. Johannes Unger, also from Austria, was the last to compete and the atmosphere became very tense as everyone counted the blocks as he pushed them. Time was ticking away as he got up to 30, 31, 32… and then the buzzer went. Bendt was jubilant, knowing he was the winner and the celebrations began immediately.
It was a great competition, and both GB finalists did really well competing against the best of the best in the industry. We are proud of them both, and hope to see them again at a future competition.
PHOTO GALLERY OVERLEAF a THE VOICE MAGAZINE No37 2019 37
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