31.03.2023

David Hall retires

Crane and access industry veteran David Hall of Skyjack is retiring today.

Hall has spent more than 35 years in the crane and access industries, having started out in 1984, when at the age of 16 he left school to become an apprentice draftsman with Coles Cranes at its plant in Sunderland, England. The following year the company was acquired by Grove International and the young Hall was part of the team that worked on the transfer of Grove’s UK crane production from its plant in Bicester, Oxfordshire to Sunderland.
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David Hall

A few years later the Sunderland factory began producing Grove Manlift’s most popular telescopic boom lifts, the MZ66A and MZ76, initially from kits shipped to the UK from the company’s plant in Shady Grove, Pennsylvania. However the plan was for the UK engineering and drawing office team to adapt them to European components and regulations - all this before the CE standards or Single Market came into force. Modifications required included eight metre drive cut outs for the Netherlands and Germany, drive while elevated cut outs for Italy and overload systems for France etc…
Hall’s skills in this area were soon spotted and he took over the Grove Europe Manlift engineering role as Manlift engineering manager, building a small team to handle European Manlift development programmes. Among those working at Grove at this time were Wayne Lawson - now co-owner of Pinnacle Platforms - and Charlie Paterson managing director of Skyjack Europe.

In late 1996 Hall moved to Grove Worldwide headquarters in Shady Grove as integrated product development team leader. During his time there the company began developing a partnership with Canadian scissor lift manufacturer Skyjack, which promised so much but fell apart, not long after the Grove Manlift Skyjack Alliance was announced with a fanfare. He moved back to the UK in 2000 as product and market development manager and around that time Grove filed for protection under Chapter 11 insolvency rules causing many employees to leave the business, including Hall.

As an aside - Manitowoc acquired Grove in 2002 and soon decided that it did not want to be in the access business and sold the business to JLG in 2004. JLG retained the Delta Toucan mast boom product line and production facility in Tonneins, but only acquired the intellectual rights for the rest of the product line in order to eliminate a competitor.

After leaving Grove, Hall decided to try an alternative industry and to move into sales, and soon began a career in the process componentry business, with Elfab and then SPX process equipment, but after little more than five years, ex colleague Charlie Patterson - now well established at Skyjack - came calling and arranged a meeting along with Ken McDougall who was due to take over as Skyjack president. The two persuaded Hall to join Skyjack as product and business development manager for Skyjack Europe. When the global recession hit in 2008/2009 and lay offs became common, Hall moved into sales for a few years, looking after the Middle East and some of Skyjack’s key accounts in the UK, such as Nationwide. When growth returned after a few years he moved back into his product and business development role and recently celebrated 16 years with Skyjack.

In addition to his work at Skyjack, Hall has been involved with the IPAF Technical Committee and was one of the authors of the recently updated Anti Entrapment Guidance along with many other initiatives.

As of today he officially hands over his responsibilities to Mark Trowman who has been working alongside with since last year October - See: Skyjack adds to European team.
All of us here at Vertikal wish him a very long, happy and enjoyable retirement.