News

15-Feb 2009 Mitchell West strikes gold with Shell Australia

During February 2009 the Mitchell West team attended the Shell Road Transport Forum in Melbourne. The forum is a quarterly event sponsored by Shell and attended by all their partner Hired Carriers in Australia.

Ian Kent (Managing Director), Ray Bell (National Business Manager) and three of our Supervisors attended as Shell felt it was important to involve operations people in the event.

Representing their regions were:
Gary Duns Dampier Pilbara region
Lyn Pusey Geraldton Mid West region
Dave Broun Kalgoorlie Goldfields region

Together the Mitchell team is responsible for delivering over 400 million litres of Shell fuel to some of the most remote areas in WA.

The Shell Road Transport Forum presents an opportunity for Shell and its partner Carriers to review HSSE performance in an open forum and to exchange ideas that will help to reduce incidents in our businesses.

At the evenings forum dinner, Shell formally recognised Carriers for their contribution to Safety and Innovation in road transport operations. Mitchell\'s won gold for their initiative to fit all trucks in their fleet with a door alarm that is linked to the truck park brake. Should a driver attempt to exit the cab without applying the park brakes the horn will sound when the driver\'s door is opened.

The fix was first proposed by Dave Broun in the Goldfields following an incident in 2008. Dave and

the Kalgoorlie workshop looked for a cost effective engineering solution that would eliminate the risk of a truck rollaway incident. The resulting system has now been fitted to all trucks on fuel operations and is being rolled out across the entire Mitchell business.

A great result for Mitchell\'s and a credit to the initiative displayed by the Goldfields team.