Natural Born Leader: Trucker’s dedication has him pulling lead truck in World’s Largest Convoy

PLANTAGENET, Ont. — Ever since hearing about the Canadian Special Olympics Convoy, Stephane Gauthier has been determined to lead the pack. And that’s exactly what this Plantagenet, Ont. driver did when the Ontario offshoot of the annual U.S. World’s Biggest Truck Convoy rolled into Paris, Ont. earlier this month.

Gauthier, a J.R. Menard flatdeck owner-op was busy this summer collecting pledges — $10 here, $20 there — in a bid to earn the lead truck spot in the convoy. Lead position goes to the driver who collects the most money for the cause. He started out with a goal of raising $1000, but surpassed that halfway through the summer.

Stephane Gauthier and daughter Ashley

A fundraiser for the Special Olympics, The World’s Largest Truck Convoy got its start in Florida in 2000, when Cpl. Norm Schneiderhan of the Orange County, Florida Sheriff’s Department — a former over-the-road driver — got the idea to run a truck convoy to raise money for Special Olympics athletes. Four years later his idea had expanded to 37 convoys in 27 states, including the inaugural Canadian run in Edmonton last year. This summer, the convoy rolled into Ontario first before moving west to Alberta this past weekend.

Gauthier devoted the same kind of energy to the convoy that he typically devotes to winning at truck shows, which is considerable. Gauthier and his 1999 Black and Blue Freightliner FLD120 are a familiar site in the winner’s circles at truck shows across the continent. This year alone he’s walked away with trophies from the Carp, Fergus, and Rodeo du Camion truck shows, as well as a second place finish at Mid-America in Louisville.

“When you go to the shows you do it for bragging rights,” he says. “It’s not about the money, it’s about what you can do to top the other truck. It’s the same for the convoy. I want to win so I can say I beat my buddies.”

Gauthier also sees the event as a chance to involve his nine-year-old daughter Ashley, who joined him in the cab during the convoy. He says he wants to show his daughter the spirit of the Special Olympics captured in the Game’s motto: ‘Let me win, but, if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt.’ Gauthier was so touched by the motto that he’s had it inscribed in his truck’s backboard.

You get a real sense of Gauthier’s dedication when you find out that his Freightliner actually belongs to his company, yet he sunk $6000 of his own money into it. “The floor is red cherry, the shifter is forged steel, all my knobs and steering wheel is rosewood, and under the dash I’ve got eight triple blue LED lights that makes the dash chrome blue when they’re on,” he says. And he keeps it all gleaming, all the time.

His father, a longtime owner-op with Highland Transport, taught him to drive 10 years ago after Gauthier figured he’d try driving after a long stint in construction. “I was going to take a course, but [my dad] insisted that I learn from him,” he says. “I spent one winter with him one-on-one learning to drive with his 13-speed International 9400.”

His first driving gig was hauling gravel with a Ford L8000. He says it was a great place to cut his teeth, but “my real goal was to drive a tractor.” So after two years he signed on with Ivaco Rolling Mills and started hauling wire rod coils. Gauthier did a lot of Ohio and Pennsylvania runs, with loads back to Montreal. Everything was rosy until 9/11, when the border tightened up making the run a real dog. That’s when he decided to stay in Canada.

“I met Francois Rouleaux over at J.R. Menard in St. Isidore, who told me he had a good used daycab for me to drive if I wanted to, so I started driving for them,” he says.

That fit Gauthier just fine because he knew the guys at J.R. Menard were as mad about trucks as he was. Besides eventually providing him with his award-winning Freightliner, and giving him work hauling building materials around Quebec and Ontario, the company is also fully supportive of his passion for truck shows.

While Gauthier likes driving, he wants to build himself a sideline business doing car and truck detailing, parlaying lessons learned from his show n’ shine experiences into a profitable enterprise where he gets other peoples’ rigs ready for the judges. “I’m no good with the engines, but I know my way around the chrome,” he says.