Prize Fighter

Sometimes, it’s a long journey back to where you started. And finding something you lost along the way can really make the extra twists and turns worthwhile. Ask Donald Porlier. He lives near Montreal, but he had to venture as far as Switzerland to rediscover what he’d lost in New York City one awful night several years ago.

Porlier was as comfortable behind the wheel as anywhere-until two years ago, when he found himself on the wrong end of an attempted hijacking in New York City. His truck, once his home away from home, “wasn’t my friend anymore,” he says. “It was the cradle of a nightmare.”

Porlier had given up driving when a friend, Steve Bilas of Con-Way Central Express in Montreal, suggested he enter a driving competition to restore his confidence. Porlier had excelled at rodeos before, and Bilas remembered the annual European contest, the World Trucking Championships, about to be held in Bern, Switzerland. Porlier applied and was accepted, but his usual class-semi-trucks-didn’t exist in Europe. Instead, he was offered the chance to try his luck with the European version of a straight truck.

His test rig had a 13-speed underdrive transmission-something he hadn’t seen in 15 years. The high/low range selector was reversed and the gear gates were arranged in three opposing slots, like the “H” pattern you’d find here, but with another leg. He was, however, impressed with the tight turning radius of the truck. “It was,” he says, “like driving a fork-lift truck in a warehouse.”

Porlier worked through the obstacles with ease and won-beating more than a hundred other drivers from dozens of different countries. And he realized somewhere through the course that he was once again at home behind the wheel.

Porlier returned to Montreal proud and confident that he could still drive a truck the way he used to. He had ventured to Europe by himself-without telling anyone-and he returned with more than a trophy for his trouble.

In the end, his boss at Groupe Robert welcomed him back to work after his prolonged absence and made a real example of how pride and determination can help someone overcome nearly any obstacle. Groupe Robert made Porlier an ambassador for the company at official functions, and reimbursed him for all his European travel expenses.

In taking home the world title, Porlier proved to himself that he was still capable of doing what he loved: to drive with skill. After facing the best drivers in the world an ocean away, the road back was easier than he expected. He carted home the gold, and a little something else a whole lot more valuable.