Royce Industries gets cars, trucks clean

If there's a dirty job associated with cars, trucks or railcars, Royce Rasmussen will do it.

That is, his company, West Jordan-based Royce Industries, will do it. The company is a major developer of car and truck washes and the largest distributor of pressure washers in the United States.

But in the beginning, back in 1984, it was Rasmussen, a former trucker, and his equipment doing whatever he had to do to restore grimy commercial trucks and railcars to cleanliness.

If a client needed backhoe work to clear large debris out of its railcars, Rasmussen did it. If a rail company needed debris cleared from its tracks, he did that, too, in addition to pressure-washing each vehicle by hand.

Once Rasmussen was able to hire employees, he made sure they were trained in his whatever-it-takes philosophy and then retained them with salaries well above normal for the industry and, for mechanics and parts staff, incentive pay that can reach 50 percent of annual salary.

Rasmussen also implemented environmentally friendly practices years before such practices became popular.

He has taken the company in new directions that build directly on its foundations, such as the pressure-washer business and a division that helps investors open their own carwashes. Royce Industries has expanded its operations in recent years to Nevada, Idaho, Colorado and Arizona.