Stephen Large, currently from Spirit River Alberta, is our March 2006 Rig of The Month driver. This is his story:

There was a foot of snow covering the ground at Czar, Alberta, on September 10, 1965; the day my dad (18) took my mom (17) to the hospital in Provost, Alberta. When they went home, I was with them. At that time all together our ages didn’t add up to thirty-six years. 

My young parents, Skip and Eileen Large, raised me and my two younger brothers, Roger and Brent, at Poplar Lodge Ranch - which is twelve miles south of Czar on Hwy 41. My Dad is part owner of Poplar Lodge Ranch which runs a feedlot and grows feed. It was a great place to grow up, as there was always something to do and lots to learn. Like many farms there was lots of different equipment and by the time I was 8 years old I was learning to drive tractors and trucks around the farm. 

The one machine that fascinated me the most was our D4 CAT which we used for plowing snow in the winter and cleaning corrals in the summer.  For the next few years I’d run that little CAT every chance I got. It was a busy time for me, running machinery, working in the shop, and going to school. When I was about twelve, the farm bought a bigger CAT, a D7E, which I also ran every chance I got. We cleared brush, buried rock piles, and did a little custom work with it.

We did almost all our own equipment repairs in our shop on the farm. I was really interested in anything mechanical and I’d run from the school bus straight to the shop everyday after school. On the weekends I’d be at the shop by 7 AM to see if there was anything for me to do.  My Dad and his partners, Dave Hughes and Dean Porter, always had jobs waiting for anyone who wanted to work. 

If we were not busy farming or harvesting and there was no work for the CAT, I would work in the shop where Dave Hughes and my Dad taught me to weld and work on engines, transmissions and anything else that needed fixing or overhauling. My Dad was a very hard worker and expected the same from me but he also made sure I was paid accordingly. When I was fifteen, in the summer of 1981, I was getting about $6.00 an hour which went up to $7.50 an hour when I turned sixteen. 

Several times a week, Czar Cattle Haul would bring calves to the feedlot from the auction markets and haul the fat cattle to the packing plants. I didn’t have a lot of interest in the cattle, but I really liked those trucks.  They were usually loading after supper and from the house I could see their lights as they waited in line and took turns backing in to load. My mom’s youngest brother, Robert Holmberg, was one of the drivers and I’d go down and help chase the cattle up the loading chute hoping that he’d take me with him to Red Deer, Calgary, Brooks, or Saskatoon. 

I went with him a lot and he’d usually let me drive that old 1975 Kenworth W900 part of the way. I was hooked after the first trip and I’d go with him or one of the other drivers every chance I got. Jack Roworth, the owner of Czar Cattle Haul, let me practice with that old truck until I could back into any of the loading chutes in the area and I could shift up or down through all 13 gears. Most of the people from Czar and the surrounding area learned to drive and got their class 1 license in a Czar Cattle Haul truck including my dad, my uncle, myself, both of my brothers, and my cousin Greg. 

I got my Class 1 license when I turned eighteen in the fall of 1983 and went to work for Czar Cattle Haul and Triple F Ranches hauling cattle, grain, and fertilizer around Alberta and Saskatchewan. When trucking was slow, I worked for Kessler Construction, Ironside Contracting, and Hall’s Cat Service. I liked running cats and scrapers just as much as I liked driving truck, but in the early 1980’s, the oil patch was pretty slow, so I ended up trucking most of the time. 

For the next four years, I spent many Friday nights hauling cattle out of the Provost Auction Market. I’d get some sleep Saturday night then load fat cattle just about every week night and drive all night to Calgary, Brooks, Red Deer, Edmonton, or Saskatoon and be back by morning.  Then I’d haul barley into the feedlots around Czar during the day. 

It was hard work cleaning out the cattle liner in the winter time, but it kept you in shape and it sure woke you up when you spent an hour or two in the trailer at 40 below with the wind blowing twenty miles per hour!  It was a good thing that there were three heaters in the old Kenworth.  (But no A/C for the summer)

In 1987 I went with Terry Sharp, a friend of mine from Wainwright, on a trip to California in his new Western Star. We picked up a load of 20 Mule Team Borax and hauled it to the insulation plant in Innisfail.

We were gone four or five days and we never had to shovel cow crap, we didn’t see a gravel road, and there was a truck stop to have a shower at each night! I decided that would be a good job for me – a five day trip and weekends off at home.

I found out that Will Amundson was getting a new Peterbilt and was ready to sell his beautiful 1981 Kenworth W900 with a job hauling Borax to Innisfail. I remembered seeing that truck when he first bought it and now it was 7 years old and it was nicer then when it was new - except for the color!  It was candy apple red when I first saw it but Will had to paint it Liquid Air colors when he pulled tanks with it. I always wanted a red W900 but this white and blue one was nice and it came with the perfect job for a 22 year old truck driver, so I bought my first truck!  It was built in Montreal and had a Cummins Big Cam 4 400 hp engine and a RTX 15 speed transmission with SSHD’s @ 4.63:1 ratio on a KW 8-bag air ride.  It had a 36” crawl through sleeper with a 220” wheel base. Will kept the tanks and wheels polished to a mirror-like shine all of the time, so I kept it up too. I never made a trip without several comments from other truckers about how nice it was. 

I hauled blood meal or fertilizer to central California and hauled Borax from the Mojave Desert to Innisfail or Edmonton for almost a year and a half. It was like a dream job but it didn’t pay very well so I quit and went to work hauling cattle again - with my own truck this time.  The money was much better and it was good to be home three or four times a week instead of three or four times a month. I also hauled a few loads of pre-fab homes from Lloydminister to North Western B.C. From there they were loaded onto a barge that went to Hartley Bay and other coastal locations. 

I was putting about 10,000 miles a month on that old truck running Saskatchewan, Alberta, and B.C. and the truck never gave me any trouble except for the engine. What I really wanted was a W900 long nose with an aerodyne sleeper with a 3406. I went to a few KW dealers and checked out the prices to buy an extended hood and a factory aerodyne sleeper roof cap. I figured that in a couple of months, during the winter of 89-90, I could stretch the frame a couple of feet, move the cab back 10” and put on a new long hood. The sleeper could have been taken apart and have a couple of feet added and then put the aerodyne roof on. Then I could paint the whole thing candy apple red! 

No problem!  Wait a minute!  I didn’t have the $25,000 for the parts and the paint job and the bank wasn’t very interested in helping me out. So I decided to do it in stages. I went to every KW dealer in Alberta and Saskatchewan and tried to order a brand new long hood, but no one took me serious! They all told me to have my dad or my boss come in to order the $4000 hood. No one would believe that I owned the truck!  Finally, I went to S&M Kenworth in Red Deer and Laurie, the parts man said he would order the hood for me but assured me that I wouldn’t like the price.

He asked why I wanted to do that much work, and spend that much money, just to end up with a long nose Kenworth. While we were talking Martin Dejonge, one of the salesmen, overheard us and asked why I didn’t just order a new truck spec’d the way I wanted it. 

I had heard that Kenworth was building some limited edition trucks like the one from the ‘007’movie, but I didn’t know they were going to be 10” longer from the bumper to the back of the cab than the standard W900B. Martin showed me a drawing and a couple pictures of the truck. I told him if he could get me one that was candy apple red and chrome, I’d buy it.  In just a few minutes he spec’d out my dream truck.

It has a 425hp 3406B with a cat Brakesaver and Jacobs brake, a RTO 15618 transmission and DS402P rears @ 3.55:1 on KW 8 bag air ride and 10 bolt unimount Alcoa aluminum wheels. A 60” aerodyne sleeper w/bunk beds, fridge, 2 Eldorado seats, and red VIT interior with grey buttons.  It had every switch and gauge available in a W900. 

I didn’t know it was that easy to get exactly the truck I had always wanted. Then Martin told me the price -$115,000.00 at 17 % interest was a bit scary for a twenty-four year old farm kid!  I told Martin that if Paccar would finance me, he could go ahead and order the truck. I was never so nervous in my life as during the time that Kenworth in Montreal was building my truck.

The feedlot that we hauled the majority of our cattle from had just bought their own trucks and trailers so I went to Calgary and got a job hauling meat to California and produce back to Edmonton and Calgary. At the time I thought about canceling the new truck but there were too many people that said I’d never be able to pay for a new truck and I had to prove them wrong.

The truck was delivered on May 11, 1990 while I was on my way home from California so I couldn’t get there until Sunday May 13, 1990.  Martin and Martha from Kenworth both came in on the Sunday (which was Mother’s Day) and signed all of the papers. I had traded my old truck in on the new one so it only took minutes to grab my stuff and throw it in the new truck.

It was the nicest truck I had ever seen or driven! I went to work the following week running to southern California and back four to five times a month and over the next 4 years I ran over 200 trips up and down Interstate 15.  It was a nice run while on the road but I hated having to go all over California picking up one box of Bok Choy here and two boxes of Swiss Chard there and six boxes of some other thing that no one has ever heard of.  Some places won’t wait the extra 5 minutes until you could get there, so you would have to wait all night to get twenty dollars worth of produce. You could spend days loading then drive straight through to Calgary (except for the 4 or 5 hours at Canada Customs waiting for the same customer to fax the papers to the broker so you could cross the border).  From the border you’d drive as fast as you could to the warehouse - only to be told to wait because you were late getting there!  If you’re late, won’t you be even later if you wait? 

Four years of this was all I could stand. I quit and went back hauling cattle - this time I was running to Pasco, Washington; Hyrum, Utah; and Greely, Colorado. I really enjoyed hauling cattle again and now I had a truck that was set up, and looked, exactly how I wanted it. The truck was well broke in by then and I never found anyone that could out-pull it unless they had a KT Cummins or a 3408 CAT. I also never saw a fuel stop that my truck didn’t like! It was only getting about 4.5 mpg (US gallons).  The freight rates for hauling cattle were getting lower and lower thanks to some big outfits from Saskatchewan who were trying to see who could starve their owner operators the most and all this time the fuel prices were getting higher.  The rest of the livestock trucks had to work for the same rates, so it didn’t last long.

It didn’t help that my truck weighs about 25,000 pounds so it’s a little heavy for hauling anything by weight. I went to work hauling equipment where tare weight was not such a problem - if you were too heavy, you could buy an overweight permit as long as you were only hauling one piece of freight. 

I really missed operating equipment and ever since I was a kid on the farm, where I was operating machinery and driving truck, I had wanted to haul heavy equipment. This job was perfect. I had the opportunity to load and unload the machines myself and I also used the machines to put the deck sections in and out of the trailer and to load and unload the jeep and booster. 

Often I would run 1500 to 2000 miles or more empty (just hauling the jeep and booster) to get to the load. Then I would spend an hour or two putting the trailer together, loading the load and chaining it down.  Then I’d haul the load which was usually oversize and overweight for another couple thousand miles the other way. 

My truck was getting lots of miles on it and everyone kept telling me that it wasn’t going to last pulling those big, heavy loads - my gross weight was usually 170,000 - 180,000 lbs and lots of loads were up to twenty-five feet wide!  When the truck was just over 6 years old, it turned over to 1 million miles at 29832 hours and was still going strong. I had only replaced the rod and main bearings twice, the water pump twice, and the center section of the exhaust manifold once.  Since it was new I used Shell Rotella T 15/40 oil and I religiously changed it and put on a new Caterpillar oil filter and coolant filter every 12,000 miles.  I found out about the Shell Rotella T Million Miler program, so I submitted all of my records to them and I was presented with a Million Miler leather jacket and inducted into Shell’s Million Miler Haul of Fame.

The engine was getting hard to start and was using a bit of oil, so I took the truck home to my dad’s farm and had Brian Cooper, a local mechanic with extensive knowledge and experience with CAT engines and machines, put in 6 cylinder kits and a new cylinder head and turbo charger. He also re-sealed the Brakesaver and the front structure.  The total cost was only about $7,000.  Soon after that, I finally had to replace the brake shoes and drums for the first time. With the Brakesaver and Jake Brake together you almost never need to use the service brakes. The truck seemed to last forever, but so had the payments so it was good to finally have it paid for.

I kept pulling a 9 axle lowboy for 5 more years, averaging about 10,000 miles a month, hauling all kinds of bulldozers, loaders, graders, cranes, rock trucks, compressors, vessels and turbines.  For about a year, I had my own F250 4x4 diesel pilot truck that went with me when required. I eventually traded it for another 1990 KW W900L. It was a Kenworth special edition ‘007’ model with an ugly paint job that was previously owned by Bob Reid. That truck eventually burned up on Hwy 2 south of Edmonton when I had it rented out to a fellow from Airdrie.

Around this time, I was hauling oversize loads into Saskatchewan and I had stopped at a gas station in Walsh, Alberta where I met Angela. She was the nicest person I’d ever met. After I convinced her that I was a nice guy, she ended up riding in the truck with me on and off for a couple of years. It was great to have such a nice person riding along with me so I didn’t get so lonely and we have been together about 9 years now. 

I could have hauled construction equipment forever, but fuel prices nearly doubled in 6 years and the pay stayed the same so I finally quit in 2001.  My truck had over 48,000 hours on it and about 1.6 million miles, so I decided to park it and we went up to Spirit River and worked for Bryan Johnson, a friend of mine. I operated equipment building oil leases and once in a while, I’d haul his machines from job to job with my old truck. I realized that I really missed driving it and I also missed living in southern Alberta.

We moved back to High River and started my own lowboy service, hauling local construction equipment around the Calgary area. I did some tractor service also, hauling livestock, hay, and oilfield equipment for other companies. As it got busier I hired a couple of drivers and bought a dump truck, a 920 CAT loader, and another 1980 KenworthW900.  Then I hired two owner operators to pull my other lowboys and things were going really good. We hauled lots of paving equipment and asphalt plants and moved gravel crushers, etc.  We hauled lots of construction and pipeline equipment and were available 24 hours a day. 

Around this time, on Jan 10, 2004, our son Ryatt was born - and just like his daddy - he loves big trucks and construction equipment.  I enjoyed working around home at this time so I could see my baby boy whenever I wanted.  When things got really busy, Angela and Ryatt would just come along with me in the Kenworth.

Just when things were really starting to get busy, our biggest account bought their own truck and lowboy and about a week later, the second biggest account declared bankruptcy after running up a huge freight bill!  They say bad things come in threes, so I wasn’t surprised when another client decided not to pay. I sued him and won a judgment, but I am on a long list of judgments against him and it is very unlikely that I will ever get that money. One of my lease operators went to work his truck at a heavy haul company in Calgary and the other lease operator sold his truck.

I kept running my old Kenworth for a while and in 2005, at about 60,000 hours, it rolled over to 2 million miles. I decided that it was time to park the truck. It is over 15 years old with 2 million miles and it doesn’t even have a dent in it. It has never been in the ditch or up-side down. There are a few trucks around with 2 million miles on them, but they usually don’t have the original engine and owner/driver.  

I notified Shell Canada about this 2 million mile milestone and that I still had only used Shell Rotella T 15/40 oil in it. In November, 2005, Shell presented me with a personalized Seiko watch at their national sales conference in Calgary and took my family and I to Hy’s Steakhouse for an excellent meal.

I am currently working in Spirit River again for Bryan Johnson, servicing, repairing and welding on his fleet of construction equipment. At times, I operate his equipment building leases and so on. We will continue to stay around Spirit River while there is lots of work and where we are expecting our second child in August of 2006. I still have that 1990 W900L Kenworth and on occasion I use it to pull Bryan’s 40 wheeler or 8 axle lowboy or sometimes my own 16 wheel lowboy or belly dump trailer. I have no plans to get rid of the truck and someday I plan to spend some time and money on restoring it. It just wouldn’t be fair to my little boy to not to be able to go truckin’ with his daddy.