Innovative Product Awards 2016: Category Winners
As we revealed in the December 2016 issue of RER, the top prizes in the 2016 Innovative Product Award competition came from some unexpected sources.
The Gold Award went to Redondo Beach, Calif.-based Makinex – a company with roots in the Australian “hire” industry -- for its Powered Hand Truck PHT-140, a small hand truck that can make safely lifting some larger machines a simple one-person, a machine that can be rented to customers and used by rental companies around the yard and shop. The Silver Award went to United Academy, part of the world’s largest equipment rental company United Rentals, for its aerial work platform virtual reality simulator, a technology once viewed as improbably futuristic that now furthers the education of safety techniques on AWPs. And the Bronze Award goes to one of the rental industry’s most popular suppliers and no stranger to Innovative Product Award plaques Genie Industries for its Z-60/37FE and DC boomlifts in which the same machine can go from full electric to hybrid to direct current with a flip of the switch.
While these three products were the top three vote-getters among the dozen rental industry IPA judges, there were eight other category winners, some of which were neck and neck with the three top vote-getters, falling a point or a few points short in the balloting.
The three top winners won in the material-handling, technology enhancements and lifts category. There are nine other category winners, presented here. So let’s take a look at some more outstanding products, which are likely to be part of many a rental inventory in the near future, if they aren’t already.
About the Author
Michael Roth
Editor
Michael Roth has covered the equipment rental industry full time for RER since 1989 and has served as the magazine’s editor in chief since 1994. He has nearly 30 years experience as a professional journalist. Roth has visited hundreds of rental centers and industry manufacturers, written hundreds of feature stories for RER and thousands of news stories for the magazine and its electronic newsletter RER Reports. Roth has interviewed leading executives for most of the industry’s largest rental companies and manufacturers as well as hundreds of smaller independent companies. He has visited with and reported on rental companies and manufacturers in Europe, Central America and Asia as well as Mexico, Canada and the United States. Roth was co-founder of RER Reports, the industry’s first weekly newsletter, which began as a fax newsletter in 1996, and later became an online newsletter. Roth has spoken at conventions sponsored by the American Rental Association, Associated Equipment Distributors, California Rental Association and other industry events and has spoken before industry groups in several countries. He lives and works in Los Angeles when he’s not traveling to cover industry events.