I love my job. I know I have said that more times than anyone cares to read, so I have that ‘broken record’ thing going. But I stand by it, I really do love my job. In particular, I love the opportunities it affords me.
Firstly, I get to photograph some pretty cool trucks. I mean seriously cool trucks, like ‘Waylon Jennings driving with Big Bird riding shotgun in a truck’ level of cool trucks. Google that image and thank me later.
Secondly, along with photographing some of Australia’s finest trucks, I get the opportunity to meet the people behind the trucks, and I get to sit down and hear some truly inspiring and motivating stories. It’s being able to share those personal journeys that makes me appreciate and love my job.
Hence, I am starting this story with an acknowledgement of my privilege and a massive thank you to Steve and Tracey Armstrong for sharing their story with me and for letting me photograph the latest truck to join their company.
The eye-catching, jaw-dropping flagship of the fleet, a massive Kenworth T909 appropriately named ‘Track 18 on Pink’s Greatest Hits So Far Album’
Alright, that’s not actually the name of the truck. I am however fully aware of the difficulties placed on my editor if I keep referring to the official name that Steve and Tracey bestowed on their newest 909.
You will learn that all the STA trucks are named after song titles or lyrics. Each name has a significant memory or meaning to Steve and Tracey, and the latest is no exception. This new 909 is carrying the name of Pink’s smash hit F##kin Perfect.
The name may be written on the truck, laser cut into the interior and just plain obvious by the look of it, but out of consideration for my editor, I shall just refer to it as ‘Track 18 on Pink’s Greatest Hits So Far album’ or Track 18 for short. Then there is a lot less redacting my editor has to do. Sound good, let us move on then.
The STA origin story
Steve and Tracey Armstrong are the couple behind the STA in STA Trucking, the company they started back in February 2012. Steve has been in the industry since about a week before he was born.
His grandad was a truckie, his dad was a truckie and whilst there was a brief time where Steve tooled up as a mechanic, there really was very little risk that Steve would end up anything less than a truckie himself.
On the other side of the wedding band is the lovely Tracey. Tracey is another one of those wonderful wives who had slightly less than zero interest in trucks until she met her other half.
“We met in 2009 I think, I had no interest in trucks. I had an interest in Steve though,” laughed Tracey.
It must have been a very strong interest I should point out. Whether it was Steve’s long-gone flowing locks of auburn hair or his unmistakable boyish charisma I can’t say, but it was enough for Tracey to start their relationship by committing to a week in the truck with Steve.
“Steve was doing grain at the time, I thought I would spend the week with him, help me get to know him better, but he spent most of the time on the UHF to his mate he was travelling with,” remembers Tracey.
“We were just in a day cab truck as well, so we’d sleep in our swags under the truck. I remember one time when it rained, and Steve put the bins up and we slept in the bins. It was quite funny watching me climb into the bins.”
A week in a day-cab truck with your partner will test any relationship much less a brand new one, even more so for a newbie like Tracey who had no transport pedigree behind her at all — as was evident from another of Tracey’s memories:
“There was one time there we were weighing off, we were too heavy. So, Steve said get out of the truck, so I was outside the truck, he was throwing stuff out of the truck to try and get our weight down.
“And then he turns around and says, ‘Get off the weighbridge’. I was standing on the side of the weighbridge,” said Tracey with a smile, “Steve informed me for future reference I’m the same weight in the truck as I am standing on the side. I didn’t know. I’d never been in one.”
That first week may have been a steep learning curve for Tracey and Steve but it also showed how well the two worked together and how aligned their future plans were. That compatibility and shared drive would lead to the creation of their own family business.
At the time when Steve had Tracey sleeping in a swag out in the back blocks of Millmerran, he was working in partnership with his dad, under the banner of J & S Armstrong Transport.
“I’d bought my first truck back in 2002,” recalls Steve. “On the phone to the old man after a couple of beers, we decided to buy a truck. It was a second-hand K100G. Back then there were heaps of people looking for towies, so we went two-up all over Australia.”
Over the next few years, the father and son partnership grew to as much as three trucks — doing everything from B-double express work to flat top and bulk work.
Steve worked under the J & S Armstrong banner for 10 years and learnt a hell of a lot about running a transport company. “I have a lot of self-taught management skills and developed a drive to succeed.”
In 2012, with the backing of his now wife, and her new-found appreciation for trucking, Steve and Tracey branched out on their own and formed STA Trucking.
“I had a purple T401 that I was running in J&S Armstrong, and we decided to take that and go out on our own,” Steve recalls. “We had that truck in at Toll and were towing their trailers and that’s where it all started.”
Riding the highs and lows
Between that first second-hand T401 and the sensational ‘Track 18’ you see on the pages before you there have been plenty of successes and failures. It has been the commitment of Steve and Tracey to dig in and fight over the years that has seen the STA Trucking fleet expand to where it is now, with 11 trucks and 30 trailers and dollies.
“When we first started, we had some issues,” Steve says. “When Charli (the couple’s daughter) was born I took a couple weeks off to be at home and put a driver in the truck. He rolled it in the first couple of days.”
At that stage the couple were flat out with Toll and down time wasn’t an option. The couple managed to find another second-hand T401, but it was a big hurdle for the small family business.
The good news was the work the couple were doing for Toll was spawning more opportunities. Within the first 12 months a second-hand Western Star was added to the garage to keep up with the requests and when Toll pushed for even more work Steve and Tracey invested in their first brand-new truck, a DAF.
“We bought the DAF purely because of the price. It wasn’t doing interstate, maybe as far as Gladstone and places like that. We needed a reliable truck at a good price and the DAF was good.”
It was at this stage with three trucks, a couple of drivers and Tracey at home on maternity leave with their first child, that their world got flipped on its head.
“I had just informed my work I wouldn’t be coming back because I was flat out with all the business stuff, and we were doing well,” Tracey says.
“Then on the Friday we get a call from Toll saying Sunday would be our last run. We panicked, we had no trailers of our own, we had just brought the brand-new DAF, it was awful.”
There’s an old T S Elliot quote ‘if you aren’t in over your head, how do you know how tall you are’. That one phone call put Steve and Tracey into a position where the couple could show exactly how tall they were as a team working together — in a very quick manner.
“We were very determined,” exclaims Tracey. “We didn’t want to lose our house, we wanted to succeed and not let this ruin us. Steve got out the old phone book and just started ringing everyone. Anyone with ‘Transport’ in the name, he rang. And kept ringing. Every day.”
The couple took on any work they could just to pay the bills.
“We nearly lost everything; we didn’t know where our next paycheque was coming from. Our accountant at the time said sell stuff, sell the car, sell a lung if you have too,” recalls Steve.
The persistent phone calls worked. Steve and Tracey ended up with their trucks towing Lindsay Brothers trailers, Roadmaster, Nolans, Blenners, anyone they could work for they did.
“It was all adhoc work, stuff Steve was picking up on a day-to-day basis,” says Tracey. “Some of it was crap work, crap money. We went through a lot of drivers as well because a lot of it was just Brisbane to Sydney and it was hard on them.”
The couple are the first to admit it was a very difficult time, but their drive to survive and flourish was extremely strong. The experience with Toll opened their eyes to the pitfalls of putting all their eggs in one basket and led to a few changes.
Taking stock for the future
“We decided to downsize from the three trucks to two. We sold off the Western Star and the 401, kept the DAF and bought our first Freightliner Argosy,” says Steve.
It wasn’t just a change in the trucks as the couple also decided to get their hands on their own trailers as well.
“We went to the auctions and got a couple of old Lindsays trailers,” says Tracey. “They needed tidying up which I did by hand. I did all the paint stripping myself because Steve kept hacking into the sides with the box cutter.”
Credit where credit is due. Steve did do a great job of the sanding and painting. It was just the more delicate work that was left to Tracey.
Having their own trailers opened up more doors for the couple. Ensuring they always fronted up with professional looking trucks and professional drivers saw their reputation grow too. Steve and Tracey slowly moved away from the second-hand trucks and started building a fleet of new Freightliners.
In 2021 things changed again for STA Trucking when they received a phone call and an invite to sit down with Jeff Miller and Graham Keogh from Wickhams Transport.
“We’d done a couple of adhoc loads for Wickhams and then got called up for a meeting, they asked if we could do a road train a week to Adelaide and we jumped at the opportunity,” says Steve.
It was a big leap for a company that had a blanket ‘No bonnets, no trains’ policy.
“I’d stuck to just cabovers when we moved to B-doubles,” Steve says. “It was always about maximising everything. But when we got the Wickhams run, we went and ordered our first 909 and our first brand new road train trailers.”
Since that first 909 STA has grown and grown. The family company’s ability to provide professional quality service has seen their work for Wickhams and their other clients consistently increase in volume. It has also seen Steve and Tracey’s back yard shrink as more trucks roll in.
Truck number 10
It is their 10th truck ‘Track 18’ that is the special one though — as the couple hit the magic number they were looking for in regards to fleet size.
“10 was my magic number,” Tracey says. “Steve’s magic number was three, so we discussed it and settled on 10.”
Number 10 had to be special though, and Tracey was determined to take the reins on the new truck.
“I wanted a pink truck, but Steve reckoned no one would drive it,” she says. “Then I explained my vision. I wanted black down the bottom, black tanks, black everything and pink up the top half.”
That was a vision Steve could get on board with, the couple rang Brown & Hurley and snapped up a cancelled order, albeit a white 909 with a red chassis.
The truck came up from Melbourne and headed straight for the RWI Paint and Panel workshop where it was stripped right down and completely repainted.
With its new black chassis, and black and pink paint scheme, the truck headed down to Highway Lights on the Gold Coast where more black magic was added. Monster stacks, custom guards, watermelon lights, under glow and a whole heap of other extras were added to the big 909.
The team at OnHighway Electrics made sure all the driver’s creature comforts were added to the interior as well, including the TV, fridge and microwave. Seeing as the new 909 was put on the road to service the west, predominantly running Brisbane to Perth, Staunch Bullbars were employed to fit the big four post bullbar and finish off the ‘Track 18’ truck.
“Right from the start I’d told Steve I didn’t want to see this truck until it was finished,” Tracey says.
“You know when you get a truck, and you see it at different stages and by the time it’s ready you are already used to it. So, I only wanted to see this one when it was completed.” It meant it was a pretty long wait until Tracey finally got to see her creation unveiled and her reaction was in line with the truck’s name — it was ‘Track 18’.
The music thing
Before I do let you go off and enjoy the different views of this stunning truck, I will, as I hinted at earlier, elaborate on Steve and Tracey’s truck naming ritual.
Music is a huge part of Steve and Tracey’s lives and as such they have carried that through to their trucks.
“The first 909 we got we called it ‘Crazy Train’ as it was our first road train,” Steve says.
“The black Argosy we called ‘Nothing to Lose’ as I bought it sight unseen.
“The White Argosy that we bought at auction whilst waiting to see Alice Cooper, we called that ‘Welcome to my Nightmare’.
“The Purple Coronado which was dedicated to one of our drivers who took his own life, we called that ‘She Talks to Angels’.
“They all have special meanings.”
Once Tracey got the go ahead for her pink truck there was only one artist’s catalogue to choose from when it came to a name.
“It had to be Pink, and when you listen to the lyrics of F@#kin Perfect it’s all about battling and staying strong and determined. So, it really was the only name we could choose,” she says.
I think it is very fair to say never has a truck matched up more perfectly with its namesake and same can be said with the lyrics and how much they align with Steve and Tracey.
As Pink sings… ‘Made a wrong turn, once or twice. Dug my way out, blood and fire’.
Congratulations to STA Trucking for their ‘Track 18’ Kenworth T909.
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