Is everyone aware of what a monomyth is? I will break it down a little just so we are all starting from the same point of reference. If you Google it, you can get a very long and definitive description of a monomyth, but the simple version is it’s ‘The Hero’s Journey’. A kind of common template describing the stages of a long journey.
While it may sound very grandiose to describe this story as a monomyth, I believe it is extremely true. The story of Suzy Snowden, her C509 and how she got the keys to it is very much a monomyth.
It’s a tale of perseverance, it is a story of determination, and it is a story of a young lady who just wants to drive trucks. It’s a hero tale that shows what can be achieved if you have the drive to drive.
As I mentioned just before, our heroine for this particular tale is a young Kiwi lady named Suzy. Her aliases on the road are Suz, Suzy or Snowy and she is far too humble and unassuming to ever allow me to lionise her with an opening paragraph like I have.
Thankfully she is way down in Western Australia and that breathing room means I am able to give her the credit she deserves without coping any backlash.
This story isn’t really about the stunning C509 you see here. I mean it really is sharp, and it doesn’t just look like this for our photos, this is the way it looks every time Suz pulls out of the Toll Energy yard in Perth. However, this story is more about the young lady who washes, polishes and steers this behemoth of a truck.
A young lady who has always been spurred on by people who question her ability to do something. A young lady who grew up cruising the New Zealand highways with her dad, a young lady determined to master the art of driving the biggest and longest trucks she can, and a young lady who will no doubt read, this roll her eyes at me, and make me rewrite it because “mate, I’m not that special, I just love driving trucks”.
As I mentioned, Suz has several names by which she is known but for the sake of consistency and the fact it is easier to type I am going to stick with Suz.
Suz grew up in New Zealand’s North Island in a family of truckies. But this young lady jumped across the ditch back in 2008 to explore the opportunities Australia has to offer.
“Dad was a driver back home, so were my uncles and cousins,” Suz says. “So I knew it was always something I wanted to carry on.”
Mary apparently lost count of the number of days Suz would wag school to go for rides with her dad.
“I remember doubling up in the bunk of dad’s Scammel with my older sister and going for runs,” Suz recalls. “I remember the early starts and cold mornings. Back then it would take ages to get anywhere as well.
“Dad ran Auckland to Wellington for Keveys Transport. I remember Dad would take us to Stag Park, that was a cool truck stop, always heaps of cool trucks there, and Turangi and Tokoroa,” she says.
“There was a food caravan there; it had the best food.” Funny how kids always remember the important stuff, where the best tucker was.
From school holidays and more than a few non-school holiday adventures with her dad, the lure of truck driving just grew in Suz. However, when she finished up school it was actually the NZ Army that caught her attention.
“I’d done a course at Burnham and decided it was pretty cool and thought I’d join up. I had tried to join up as a driver but because I still only had my learner licence, I couldn’t join the transport corps,” Suz explains. “Instead I joined as a supplier.
“When I was in, I tried to do a trade change but that didn’t end up happening. I did do a driving course while I was there though, and it got me my class 2 licence (the equivalent of our HR licence).”
After six years in the army, Suz decided to take a bit of a holiday and join her parents who had recently set up camp in Perth. She took six months of unpaid leave which meant she had to pack up all her fatigues and return them to the stores. This also meant if Suz decided not to return she wouldn’t need to return to base to sort it all out. As it turned out it was a fortuitous move.
“I got over here and loved it, I mean I was getting $25 an hour packing shelves, which was pretty good back then,” she laughs. “The truck thing was always in my mind though. By then Dad was working in the mines, driving dump trucks, as well as excavators and everything else.”
In fact, shifting over to Australia only added more fuel to the fire when it came to Suz’s truck driving goals.
“I still wanted to drive, my biggest goal was to one day drive the triple road trains, that’s what I was aiming for.
“My class 2 New Zealand licence transferred over to an HR licence, and I signed up to get lessons from Makene Driving School in Malaga. I did quite a few lessons there and went for my HC licence with them and passed that first go.”
The next issue was finding a company willing to give her a start. She was young and female, two attributes that didn’t really open a lot of doors.
“Back then it was pretty daunting going for a job in a male-dominated industry, but I pretty much looked at it the same way I did with the army. When I joined the army the ratio of men to women was probably like five to one, it was the same for females in trucking. But I just thought, ‘why can’t I do it, I’ll give it a crack’,” Suzy recalls.
“I applied for several jobs and was lucky that Shaun Carey at Goldstar Transport gave me a go, which was great. He didn’t have to. I was very inexperienced, and I was also just 24 back then. That meant insurance-wise he didn’t have to give me a chance either; I was pretty lucky to get my foot in the door.”
First truck
Suz’s infallible attitude, mixed with the faith bestowed on her by the GoldStar Transport team, saw Suz finally getting behind the wheel and starting her trucking career.
“I remember my first truck and job. It was an old Volvo FH10, it was scoddy as hell, but I loved it,” she smiles. “It was cool because it was my start. I was delivering to Target stores around Perth.”
Suz laughs as she admits from the start the backing onto the finger docks wasn’t her forte. “I remember ringing Dad for advice, and he asked me how many trailers I was backing and having to tell him just the one.”
As much as Suz laughs as she recalls her early days, she also points out the support and help she received from the other workers.
“There were a couple of guys that were really helpful. One said to me if you ever get stuck just ask, ’cause if you don’t and think you can handle it, something will go wrong.” And that’s exactly what Suz did. If she wasn’t sure, she would ask.
Suz spent three years with Goldstar and during that time upgraded from HC to her MC licence. This saw her moving from dock work around town, to B-double work on slightly longer excursions.”
My first B-double run was my first trip away. I took a load down south, it was only a couple of hours away but I still class it as an away trip, longest one I’d done.” Suz laughs.
She credits the round-town work with honing her skills and getting a greater appreciation for trucks. “With doing everything around town first, I got a lot more comfortable with turning corners, traffic, getting into driveways, knowing my truck … all that sort of stuff.”
As her skills and experience grew, so did Suz’s desire to achieve her goal of running triples. Unfortunately, that meant leaving Goldstar and starting a new role with SRH in Bunbury.
“I started in an Iveco with them, doing single and B-double work. We carted Bunnings to places like Geraldton, Albany, Esperance and places like that,” Suz says. “I did my first double road train with SRH. It was in a Freightliner Columbia, taking general freight up to Cape Lambert. I was nervous as!
“The guy I went up with was probably getting really annoyed because I was asking a lot of questions, but he was really supportive the whole way.”
SRH took Suz another step forward in her goal to drive road trains. Jumping from a B-double to that first double road train in the Columbia just strengthened her resolve. “That first double was awesome, it was so exciting. It was another step up in my career and made me really want to get a triple road train.”
It wasn’t a rush though. The opportunities were there at SRH to go straight to a triple, but Suz was smart and spent several months logging hours with a double train, getting used to how they reacted and felt.
When she had that in the bag, she took the first chance she could to lock in a load with her ultimate goal – three trailers swinging off the back. Suz was given the keys to a Century Class Freightliner and sent off to Karratha with her very first triple road train.
“I took a double to Carnarvon, then hooked up a third and went to Karratha,” Suz recalls. “It was scarier compared to a double, but cool. I remember thinking, ‘holy shit, I’m doing this’. It was a buzz, I also really appreciated the skill involved in driving these things.”
As is typical of the addiction that is trucking, once you get a taste you just want more. With her first triple done, Suz had her hand up anytime the opportunity rose.
She started stockpiling experience and building a solid reputation on Western Australia’s roads. In fact, it wasn’t long before people were coming to her with questions rather than it being her asking questions of others.
Side tippers
Suz loved running triples for SRH. When they closed down she kept up the big trucks, doing a bit of work in a Linfox shirt instead. “Linfox was good, it was all doubles or triples from Perth up to Karratha, so I got a lot of miles with them.”
With her skill level in the road train climbing, Suz decided then to shift up to Karratha and try taking on another new challenge. This time it was side tippers.
“I’d never done tippers but again just thought I would give it a go, it was very different.” It was while in Karratha learning the sacred art of tipper driving that Suz got offered the chance to pilot the big 509, her current steed.
“I was up in Karratha doing tippers when my current boss rang me. He’d heard my name from some people and rang to offer me a job,” Suz laughs. “They had a new contract and wanted me to drive for them. He showed me a pic of the 5-0 and said, ‘it’s yours’. I was blown away”.
And that’s where we are now, staring at a very cool Kenworth 509 that Suz pilots for Toll Energy, once again in a new and challenging position.
“I load up on a Tuesday and take whatever trailers they need, sometimes it’s a train and sometimes just a single. I run up to Leinster in the goldfields, I take them into the camp and unload and reload them, then I run them back out of the mine and the next truck that’s come up will take them home. I will then go and unload and reload their trailers. I’ll spend a week doing that then come home.”
When you think about it, that’s a whole week running around mine sites on dirt roads. It makes the appearance of the C509 even more impressive. However, Suz is first to give credit where it’s due when it comes to her beloved 509.
“Look, 90 per cent of the credit needs to go to my partner Logan Warren. He’s the one that has added all the extras and does a lot of the cleaning.”
See what I mean about her humble side. Suz will claim she just drives it but her passion for washing and polishing could match that of her partner Logan.
I am sure If I had been allowed on-site to photograph Suz at work, I would have snapped more than a few of her cleaning the truck during her week-long excursions in the Western Australian goldfields. You can’t run red dirt for a week and keep a truck looking this good without a few baths midweek.
As I look to wrap up this monomyth, I wanted to get Suz’s take on the good, the bad and the ugly when it comes to being a female in a still heavily male-dominated industry.
“It’s better now, there’s more females in trucks over here in WA now,” she says. “I remember when I first started though, I’d avoid the two-way because, you know, a female voice would just cop all the comments – ‘get back in the kitchen, you don’t know what you’re doing’ – all that stuff. It just drove me though, like, why can’t I do this?
“A lot of people would underestimate me because of my height and size, but I’d just use that as fuel. There were a lot of drivers that didn’t care, you’re a driver like them, but the ones that focussed on me being a girl, I fed off that. If you hate me for what I’m doing, I’ll do it 10 times better.”
with a C5.
The one thing Suz is adamant about though. If you are thinking of getting into the industry, you need to actually enjoy trucks, you need that passion for them. It’s long hours, hard work and you need to be driven to drive. That passion was evident in Suz from the age of 10.
Any kid that is willing to spend their weekends cruising the highways in an old Scammel like Suz and her sister did, well just look where that gets you. It gets you in the biggest and the best, like Suz’s stunning C509.
Keep up the good work, Suz.