November was a busy month for the Truck & Fleet Middle East team. With the cooler weather came a raft of announcements and launches, but, frankly it was great to get around to events such as the Euro 5 launches for UD Truck’s Quester and Croner trucks. Even the office was as hectic as it has been for months as we began the earnest work for our upcoming and inaugural Truck and Fleet Awards (#tfawards) in January.
Ah, that name. Rewinding a bit, we made two major decisions last month. The first was to split the Machinery and Truck Awards into two separate events, starting with the Truck and Fleet Awards. Put simply: as the year has gone on we’ve realised that one event isn’t big enough to cover all the categories we wanted across Truck & Fleet ME and our sister publication Construction Machinery Middle East.
So, now the Truck and Fleet Awards will stand by itself and come to the industry on the 25 January, 2022 at the suitably lavish Raffles Hotel in Dubai. If you haven’t done so already, please mark that date in your diary.
The second major – and potentially even bigger – decision was to open many of the categories to an industry and community vote starting 8 December.
I have always been an advocate of making the judging as inclusive and as open as possible and by placing categories such as Heavy Duty Truck of the Year, Medium Duty Truck of the Year, LCV of the Year, Van of the Year up for a vote, we can reach out to as many people in the region as possible. I’ve always followed the big industry awards, but have been frustrated that you can’t always look at the winner of the International Truck of the Year and expect we will see the same version here – and in occasional instances in can take years to see a regional launch.
Now we have created a series of awards that I hope will excite some interest in the vehicles we rely on the region and also set a benchmark to follow in the years to come.
These aren’t all product focussed awards however. Critically we want to also reward fleets in the region that setting their own benchmarks for us to follow.
If you feel your fleet or a peer’s operation is worthy of nomination please do not hesitate to get a nomination in before the process closes at the month. All the details can be found at www.tfawards.com or if you prefer drop me an email at the usual address: stephen.white@cpitrademedia.com. Let’s start 2022 with a bang.
