This month’s ‘Woman in Trucking’ feature is going to be focused away from the driver’s seat, as our central character doesn’t even hold a heavy vehicle license, yet. However, she plays a pivotal role in an area very dear to the heart of most truck drivers – the ‘looking sharp and shiny’ arena.
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I am focusing on Samantha Ruggeri, a young lady who, up until 10 years ago, admitted she had no idea what the bonneted and cabover terminology meant in reference to a truck and wasn’t able to point out an A-double Mack unit or know what a Kenworth Road train was. Growing up, Sam’s expertise lay in teaching and dancing, a far cry from the dirt and detailing that now encompasses her life. However, before Sam hit her 20s, she got introduced to the world of trucks and transport and the addiction took hold. Ten years later, she is eying up the idea of getting her license while running one of Perth’s busiest truck washing operations and being a Zen-like master of all things soap. She is the go-to lady when it comes to making a showpiece shine.
In order to introduce the lovely Samantha Ruggeri into this tale, I need to set the scene a little. I had just arrived in Perth, having driven from Brisbane. The first 90 per cent of the 4500km trip had been great weather, meaning I retained the shiny wheels and pristinely polished paint and had only the inconvenience of surfeit of suicidal bugs to contend with. That’s fine, I had my bottle of Bowden’s Bugger Off and Jax Wax Body shine, so I had been able to keep my truck looking pretty damn good. However, the final 10 per cent of the trip involved rain, inappropriately located rain, to be exact. By that I mean it only rained around the same sections of road that the big WA quad tippers all entered the highway from their stockpiles and quarries, leaving kilometres of dirt, which turned into kilometres of dirty brown road spray. This resulted in my road train looking like it had spent a week bush bashing in the Pilbara. I did not have enough micro-fibres to rescue the shine hidden under a layer of WA dirt, so while I was waiting to reload in Perth, I popped into the Kleening Zone and booked the big rig in for a little TLC, which is where I met Sam.
What convinced me to sit Sam down and learn a little more about her was when I discovered she wasn’t just the smiley face that answers the phones and books the truck in. She was the person that created the deep dive questionnaire you need to pass just to get a booking, a questionnaire that rivals any onsite induction course. It’s a questionnaire that shows how committed to cleanliness the Kleening Zone team are, and it reflects the depth to which Sam’s passion for the transport industry has hit.
Sam is a truck washing guru. What started as a part-time job has now become a Certificate in Shine for the young lady running one of Perth’s largest and busiest truck washes. She is also someone that, up until a decade ago, was teaching a classroom of five-year-olds how to dance while gaining her teaching diploma. Now she has been bitten by the transport bug and has become the sovereign supreme of soap.
“I started working here about 10 years ago,” Sam says.
By ‘here’ she is referring to the business her father bought around 2009 in ‘The Kleening Zone’.
“I was only here part-time to start – I had another part-time job and was at uni, so I would just work doing the invoices. I wasn’t even helping with the booking because I didn’t know one thing about trucks.”
While Sam may not have had a deep background in transport, one thing she had picked up from her dad Jamie was a very strong work ethic. The part-time element of her job quickly became all-encompassing and soon enough her passion for the transport industry saw the idea of becoming a teacher shelved as Sam ended up full-time at The Kleening Zone.
“I started taking on more and more responsibilities,” she says.
“Dad was teaching me and introducing me to all the different trucking configurations, as well as a lot of the drivers that came in. They were great – they’d get me out to show me the setups and types of truck they drive. At the start I didn’t even realise there were different makes of trucks.”
It wasn’t just managing the business that appealed to Sam.
“I really love getting out and cleaning – even now when I am running everything in here, I will still get out and help the team to clean as often as I can,” Sam says.
“Back at the start I had someone teach me how to wash a truck. From starting at the top, to ensuring the truck stayed wet and had nothing baked onto it, to which parts you could use brushes and which parts you had to use sponges on, I really began to appreciate the importance of what we do, and I am thankful for those lessons.”
Sam credits a lot of the regular customers for fanning the flames of her trucking passion.
“I definitely have my favourite trucks now, but most of all, with doing a lot of the cleaning, I really appreciate how important the trucks are to the drivers and how it’s our role to ensure we clean them with the care they need.”
It’s that level of attention and comprehension that saw Sam throw herself into the seriousness of her role.
“I have become extremely well informed about soaps,” she says.
“I have investigated a lot of different soaps, working out which ones work best in our conditions, which ones work best on the red dirt trucks, all that sort of stuff. There’s a lot more to it than just ‘a truck wash’. When I’m booking the trucks in, I ask a lot of questions, finding out where the trucks have come from and what they cart is important. I like to know if there’s particular areas of the trucks that need attention so I can factor that into the schedule, finding out if they want a wax as well. All that sort of stuff is important.”
While Sam’s love of the transport industry has evolved as her years behind the gurney have compounded, her preexisting skills have continued to flourish in her new role. Ingenuity and personal management are two skills that have played a huge role in the success of both herself and the family business.
“Co-ordinating the books and timing the bookings I find second nature now,” Sam says, a task made easier by actually knowing the different combinations.
“I also know what staff members work better together and in what areas, so I know I can put certain ones together and they’ll push out a particular truck in a certain time. We have a great crew working for us and they make it easier.”
It’s not just soap and staff that Sam has mastered in her new role.
“I also have a huge whiteboard of ideas I am slowly convincing dad to implement,” she says.
Those ideas are seeping through, such as the idea for the movable gantries that Sam designed, and her dad and brother built.
“I wanted something that would make it easier for our team to clean safer and more efficiently. I came up with a design, and dad can build anything, so he and my brother just knocked them up for me.”
Adding a wash and wax option to the truck wash services was also well received by Kleening Zone clients as an extra level of protection for the recently shined up rigs.
Another outside-the-box idea was lining the interior shed with white panelling, the premise being that not only would it tidy up the wash bays and make it easier to clean, but it would also add more light to the sides of vehicles, ensuring less missed spots and a better overall job done.
Sam’s formative years may not have included any thoughts of getting into the transport industry, however it is now a major part of her life and indeed her future.
“I think the transport game is a great place, especially for female workers. People have an idea of what ‘the transport industry’ is like but I have found it great. It can be a really big family, once you are in there are so many people that are keen to teach you and help you,” Sam says.
Sam also points out that in her line of work she is not the only female keen to pick up the sponges and tyre shine
“We’ve had a few females working here and they were great. The guys are also great when it comes to working alongside them,” she says.
“There are areas that just need a bit more elbow grease and the guys will pitch in and help on those spots, it’s teamwork. It isn’t easy work, but it doesn’t matter if you are male or female, you get the job done.”
I shall wrap up my homage to truck washers by once again just trumpeting the fantastic appeal and diversity of our industry and the opportunities for ‘Woman in Trucking’ to get in and master every aspect. Samantha is a shining example of the alure of our industry. At 20 years old, a truck was just an annoying moving roadblock getting in her way on the journey home. Now, a decade later, she is looking to add a heavy vehicle license to her repertoire. And as for those moving roadblocks, now Sam can’t travel anywhere without noticing and admiring them, albeit it with a critiquing view. Welcome to the club Sam.
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