If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times – I love the paths my profession leads me down. Recently I journeyed down to the small Victorian town of Echuca in order to chase up another Female in Transport story.
Word had crept back to me about a young lady running her own fleet of trucks, balancing life as a mother, a driver and an owner. That sounded perfect for me. I would get the chance to show a plethora of possibilities for female within our industry.
I made contact with the young lady herself, Sharna Chapman, and organised a time to have a sit down and quiet chat. I planned on a simple straight forward story. Instead I have ended up with a story that packs in all the buzz words from every cliché motivational poster you have ever seen. Resilience, persistence, adaptability, honesty, commitment, perseverance – I could go on and on, but then I would never get to the actual story.
The long and the short is, my original intention was to write a Female in Trucking story for all those looking at transport as a career. The story I ended up with is one I would like my daughter, my son, in fact everyone, to read. Sharna has shown that no matter what gets thrown in your path, you just keep going. Or, to put it into a cliché motivational poster term, ‘it’s not the size of the dog in the fight that counts. It’s the size of the fight in the dog’.
When I shook hands with Sharna before our interview, the first thing I noticed was the battle scars on her hands. There was oil and grease, complemented by prominent pink nail polish. rounded off with a finger wrapped and bandaged. The hands of a blue-collar worker. The office we sat in was strewn with paperwork, order forms and maintenance records. The workshop showed the remnants of a recent engine overhaul and the K108 parked outside was gleaming like it had just rolled off the factory floor. All of these visual cues were the responsibility of the young lady sitting across the desk from me. While it all seemed overwhelming, for Sharna it is all in a day’s work.
“I’m not here to make a million dollars,” she told OwnerDriver.
“I just need to pay my bills. I’ve worked hard to get this far.”
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That is the epitome of an understatement if ever I have heard one. Sharna has dealt with a messy divorce, dishonest brokers, crashed trucks, ill-intentioned managers, unreliable accountants and so much more, all just to keep her head above water. Like the infamous Martin Penwald, Sharna has rubber ducked it all and kept her head above water, looking calm while below the surface she is paddling like mad.
Growing up in the rural setting of Victoria, hard work and dirty hands were nothing new to Sharna. Her dad floated between farmwork and truck driving for her entire childhood.
“I would go with dad every chance I could get,” she says, laughingly admitting that within 10 kilometres of leaving she would already be asleep.
“Dad used to say ‘how can you sleep already, you’ve just slept all night and then you get in the truck and you’re asleep again?’. Credit where credit is due though, being able to sleep in an old T-line is no easy feat.
“I used to love going with dad. I remember doing a load of hay with him when I was about 12 and I just said, ‘dad I’m going to be a truck driver when I grow up’ and he said ‘no, that’s not going to happen’.
“I replied and told him it was going to happen.”
Sharna’s resolve was driven by the fact she hadn’t noticed many women in truck driving roles at that stage, and she knew it was something she had an interest in and a passion for.
“Growing up on a farm, there were a lot of jillaroos, and on the dairy farms there were a lot of woman milking cows – my mum milked cows for 30 years, so working in male dominated industries wasn’t something new to me,” she says.
Sharna left school well before the government would give her a truck license and, as such, she took work in the farming industry instead.
“I got a job with a chaff mill when I left school, I really enjoyed that – cutting chaff, bagging it and delivering it,” she says.
“They had a rigid and a semi that we had to load and unload by hand. But it was a job, and I was making my own money, so I didn’t care.”
A couple of years there, a bit of time in an abattoir and next thing you know Sharna is married, she has a young daughter, Rhylee and trucking took a short back burner position.
The next chapter of Sharna’s life saw many things happen. Her new husband and father of her children was a farm worker and contractor, which in turn meant Sharna became a farm worker and contractor as well. The couple purchased a small truck for transporting their contracting gear around and subsequently, much to her father’s earlier disapproval, Sharna went and got her HR licence. This allowed her to get a bit of time behind the wheel rather than just sleeping in the passenger seat.
All of this work and family was taking place around the Elmore area of Victoria and, within a couple of years, Sharna and her husband had built quite a successful company out of chicken catchers and manure distribution. I know it sounds like a weird combination, but it worked. Sharna was flat out looking after the books and, whenever she had the opportunity, she would get behind the wheel of the company’s truck and dog combination and either deliver or distribute manure. I did mention this young lady wasn’t afraid to get her hands dirty, right?
By late 2017, with three kids to contend with and a very busy agricultural business, the couple decided to branch out with the purchase of a local transport company, Runnymede Trucking Company.
“We bought the business with the work, so we had five B-double set-ups,” she says.
“Luke and I also bought another 9-oh to help cover the workload.”
Three months into the new venture, life took a rather sharp turn when the couple split. Sharna’s husband handed the new business venture over to her, and in return took the house and the original agriculture business.
It was a very difficult time. Sharna knew the books, knew about hard work and knew a bit about trucks, but becoming the managing director of a transport company was a huge step. Fulfilling that role while also looking for a new family home and battling a divorce – well that’s a lot to take on.
I’m not going to go into all the challenges that Sharna faced over the next few years as she took on the role of mother, relief interstate driver, bookkeeper and managing director. Suffice to say, hurdles like truck accidents, dodgy brokers and accountants, difficult staff and unscrupulous behaviour meant it was a very difficult learning curve for Sharna.
As the old saying goes though, ‘tough times don’t last, but tough people do’ – Sharna epitomises that mantra. Those first few years saw plenty of changes and challenges placed in front of Sharna. On their own, many of those challenges would have been enough for anyone to pack up their toys and head home – not Sharna though.
“It was really tough, but I had to make it work. I had no choice, I still to this day have no choice, I have to keep going,” she says.
Sharna is the first to heap praise on her new partner Shannon and her friends and family for helping her each and every day with keeping things afloat.
“I’m still here today because of what myself, Shannon and others have put into this” she says.
However, that in itself needs to be broken down a little. It wasn’t just her resilience that kept the wheels turning. It was Sharna’s ability to cover whatever role was needed at the time. Her adaptability and versatility.
When Sharna’s operations manager retired, she had to suddenly come out from behind the scenes and start dealing directly with customers at both ends of her client list. While this wasn’t her preferred role, she slipped into it with ease and built stronger relationships with them.
“We have a small select client base which is good, because you can make it very personal with them,” she says.
Another role that Sharna began filling that she was much happier about was the truck driving position.
“I started shuttling trailers for the drivers,” she says. “It makes their lives a lot easier, and I still do it now. I will run the trailers out to them, it saves them logbook hours and makes it safer for them.”
Another role that Sharna has become immensely proud of is her role as company service mechanic. The role came around due to financial restrains in the early years, however once Sharna started learning the ins and outs of the Cummins engines she runs, it became a task she thoroughly enjoyed.
“I’d done a little bit of service stuff on the farms, but when things were tough, I decided to learn how to do my own servicing,” she says.
“All our trucks run Cummins, and I had a good mechanic who would teach and talk me through everything, even Face Timing me to talk me through the bigger jobs. I bought a set of the Cummins manuals myself and learnt from there.”
Sharna threw herself into the mechanic role just as she had with the operations manager role and the truck driver role.
“I’ve changed motors over, I’ve replaced heads, I’ve rebuilt every truck I’ve owned,” she says with pride.
“I know my limits though; I will take care of the stuff.”
The bandaged finger I mentioned at the beginning is a testament to her hands-on approach.
As much as this story is about the versatility and resilience of this young Victorian mum, she is the first to admit that it has been a team effort, and her survival is not just down to her.
“My partner Shannon – he has driven in this business for the past 13 years, so he’s been through the previous owners as well,” she says.
“He had a very good background of how things ran, so he helps a lot.”
He has also taken Sharna’s eldest daughter under his wing and allowed her to follow in her mother’s footsteps.
“Rhylee goes with Shannon a lot and wants to drive trucks when she’s old enough,” she says.
“She also helps me in the workshop, servicing, rebuilds, everything. Plus, she works in the office on compliance stuff.”
It is difficult to shine a light on all the success Sharna has achieved without bringing up the battles she has faced, but that’s not what we want to focus on. The object of this story is to focus the light on the resilience and determination of this young mum. In a male dominated industry, she has taken on every role necessary – operations manager, compliance manager, truck driver, off sider, mechanic, tyre fitter and owner. She has taken on all of these roles without question and without hesitation. She has learnt quickly in some cases and gradually in others, all in order to keep her dreams alive and to keep her drivers employed and her bills paid. She has achieved just that.
After all the trials and tribulations, the transport industry is still an arena that Sharna loves and believes is a great industry for women to get into in any aspect. Sharna herself has proven that there is no domain a female can’t succeed in and, with the right attitude and a whole truck load of grit, you can achieve. Like Sharna though, you need to be prepared to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty.
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