In Gear - Today's Trucking

Working
without
net
a
Stephen Large babies his trucks so energetically that he
ran one of them for more than two million miles. Back
in 2005, because he only used Shell products and kept
to a strict pm schedule, the oil corporation welcomed the Czar,
Alta., owner-operator into its very exclusive two-million-mile club,
presenting him with a beautiful Seiko watch and taking him and
his wife Angela and their young son Ryatt out for steak at Hy’s.
In late ’09, when Shell wanted to shout to the world that they
were rebranding their product line, they invited special guests
and media to a fancy reception upstairs at Toronto’s chi-chi Royal
Ontario Museum.
And who did they bring along to show off their wears? Stephen
and Angela Large.
It was Angela’s first trip to the Ontario capital.
The truck that Large took such great care of for so many years
still runs and it’s still in mint.
Powered by a 425-hp Cat 3406B with a 60-in. sleeper with bunk
beds, two Eldorado seats, and red interior, this 1990 Kenworth
W900L has, according to its owner, “every switch and gauge
available in a W900.”
For years, it hauled all over the U.S. and Western Canada,
trailing livestock and feed and, toward the end of its day, heavyduty
equipment.
To hear him talk about his love of trucks is to do your heart a
favor; he’s as enthusiastic today as he was when he was learning
about engines helping his dad on the family farm 12 miles south
of Czar on 41. He’s the kind of guy who reminds you of all the
things that attract young boys to trucking in the first place.
These days, in addition to the two-million mile KW, large maintains
another 1980 winch tractor that he uses for heavy-haul and
moving asphalt plants, gravel crushers, and oilfield compression
equipment and another truck he calls an “oversize dump truck.”
And he’s a do-it-yourselfer.
“Some people think I should just hire a driver or two to run my
26 TODAY’S TRUCKING
BY PETER CARTER
What happens when owneroperators
take better care of their
trucks than they do themselves.
trucks, but I have found that is not usually profitable and sometimes
causes more stress than I need to deal with,” he says.
“Most drivers are not very interested in driving older trucks like
mine and I am equally uninterested in drivers that don’t appreciate
the older classic trucks where you have to think about what
you are doing.
“In fact, there are very few drivers today that would know how
to run a truck like my winch truck with its hydraulic brakesaver, a
six-speed main and four-speed auxiliary transmission and a
power tower to run the 30-ton mechanical winch and two-speed
48000 rear diffs.”
Like so many men in this industry, Stephen Large lovingly
catered to his iron’s every need, polishing the chrome, changing
the lubes, braking with the Jacobs and Cat Brakesaver so carefully,
he says, he barely needed to touch the service brakes.
His ledgers get equal attention. When he and Angela purchased
their 7.5-acre property a half decade ago, they put down a
full 40 percent of the price. And when he bought his new W900L,
even though it set him back $115 grand and was financed at
about 17 percent, (it was the early ’90s, remember?) the rig was
paid off after about seven years.
The trucks; the contracts; the acreage; of all the elements that
kept Large’s trucking business in business, only one didn’t get the
attention it deserved, and that’s Stephen.
In September, he turned 44 and had a stroke.