For nearly 20 years, Wash It Australia has led the charge to clean the country’s commercial road transport sector.
Since Ben Hennock founded the business out of Brisbane, Queensland in 2008, the one-truck washing effort has turned into an entire fleet of purpose-built trucks and a dedicated staff to match, helping the business boast a national presence across trucking fleets of various applications.
With this manpower and equipment, Wash It Australia’s value proposition has become quite versatile, being able to tackle many different fleet requirements with several cleaning service types – ranging in intensity, duration and diligence.
The business offers what National operations Manager, Glenn Nankervis, calls a tiered system — Express Wash, Detail Wash and Showroom Wash.
“The Express Wash is used by larger fleet companies that get their equipment washed more regularly and don’t need as thorough of a clean, while a Detail Wash includes services like tyre shining and polishing,” he explains.
“A Showroom Wash is done ahead of a fleet’s special promotion, like a photo shoot or truck show appearance.”
This versatility allows the company to clean fleets of all sizes, too. A point that Glenn and Wash It Australia take great pride in.
“As an all-in-one company, we get to do a lot more work with our customers directly than some other washers,” he says.
“We cater to anyone from an owner-driver with one truck, right up to the more massive fleets on the road. One customer of ours has up to 1,700 trailers in their fleet, so we’re most definitely set up to handle any sort of customer requirement, regardless of their size. We cater to everything.”
Through this frequent exposure to truck fleets of all shapes, sizes and conditions, Glenn and the team at Wash It Australia have keenly observed the industry’s attitudes towards the washing service that the company provides.
While Glenn feels that many see the value proposition as simple cleaning, in reality, it offers so much more.
“I think the role of washing trucks and fleets does get overlooked in the industry,” Glenn reflects.
“Fleet owners obviously see the financial cost of washing, but not some of the positives that the service provides. These owners don’t always understand that neglecting these washes will cost them in other ways.”
According to Glenn, these seemingly hidden costs of neglecting truck washing come largely in the form of maintenance issues.
The comprehensive nature of Wash It Australia’s fleet cleans can often reveal damages or malfunctions in a truck’s body and prevent these issues from worsening by keeping the damaged areas in pristine condition before they are serviced.
The maintenance issues and damaged areas, if left uncleaned, have the potential to compromise both the safety and efficiency of a truck fleet’s operations, as repair processes could be delayed giving the truck a bigger clean, if it hasn’t received regular washes.
“We’ve found that fleets which don’t regularly wash their trucks are more at risk of some pretty severe maintenance problems,” Glenn says.
“Various damages, leaks, cracked tyres – they can all easily turn into massive safety concerns later down the track. A truck that hasn’t been washed in three months with serious maintenance problems cannot be fixed quickly. It will need to undergo a big clean, and that will hold up operations immensely, making operators and drivers lose time and money.”
Glenn believes that these safety issues even extend to the mental well-being of fleet drivers, who may be stressed or unconfident on the road by being unsure of their trucks’ working conditions.
Clean fleets, on the other hand, are thought to instil confidence and pride in drivers, encouraging them to perform their duties to the best of their abilities.
“Most truck drivers are very proud of what they drive, especially when their unit’s exterior is nice and clean,” Glenn says.
“Bigger companies tend to have nice-looking fleet exteriors, and often that will correlate with well-kept interiors, too, which generally make drivers feel prouder of their work, and less stressed.”
In addition to the delivery of fleet longevity through comprehensive cleaning, Wash It Australia’s benefits to fleet also extend to strengthening their brand images in eyes of consumers.
Glenn believes that consumers strongly associate the clean appearance of a trucking fleet with its ability to provide services in an efficient manner — a thought process which may apply to some industries in particular.
“Clean branding is absolutely essential for supermarket distributors,” Glenn says.
“We clean many of those fleets. Those companies have many requirements that they must adhere to, but they’re the ones that really take pride in their cleanliness and stand out as a result. When consumers see the big-brand supermarket trailers driving down highways and shining clean, they feel more comfortable in consuming products from those brands.
“Consumers trust that those brands take precautions, that they’re compliant and that they’re safe, all through the clean look of their units on the road. Dirty transport units don’t instil confidence in anybody.”
Wash It Australia’s effective delivery of fleet longevity and strong branding to its customers is always part of the company’s services but has more recently been greatly amplified by new technological capabilities.
The opportunities to modernise have increased significantly in the company’s near two decades of operations, and founder Ben Hennock has jumped at all of them.
“Ben has always been ahead of his time,” Glenn says.
“He has always been looking for the best and most efficient ways to clean fleets. He’s always coming up with new ideas, which have more recently focused on sustainability. That constant thirst to improve is what has kept us ahead of our competition for quite some time.”
Through this thirst to improve and integration of technology, Wash It Australia has provided so much more to the country’s commercial transport industry than just a cleaning service.
The company’s commitment to its craft through these modern methods has ensured that its own motto – a clean fleet is a clean image – is also now industry best practice.
