At The Top

A PodWheels Column

In the world of professional truck driving — a world defined by precision, patience and the quiet choreography of machines — Roland Bolduc occupies a curious place. At PodWheels headquarters, his name surfaces so often that listeners sometimes assume he is a staff member, or perhaps a recurring myth. He is, instead, something more elusive: a figure who has threaded himself through the culture of the National Truck Driving Championships with the persistence of a folk hero.

Bolduc appears everywhere. He contributes to PodWheels. He is the subject of an American Trucking Associations mini‑documentary. His image anchors the cover of the NTDC history book. He has been profiled in Transport Topics so many times that his presence there feels less like coverage and more like a long‑running serialized novel.

And then, as if to reaffirm the narrative, he recently won the grand champion trophy in the 5‑axle class at the Massachusetts qualifier — another quiet entry in a career defined by accumulation rather than spectacle.

To borrow from sports commentator Jim Rome: Look at the scoreboard.

The scoreboard explains everything. It explains why PodWheels keeps returning to him, why his name echoes through the industry, why the story refuses to end. Bolduc, a two‑time NTDC grand champion, has now secured his 21st trip to the national stage, inching toward what is believed to be the record of 24 appearances — a number that feels less like a statistic and more like a geological formation–something shaped over decades.

Much has been written about the NTDC’s unofficial “king‑of‑all‑media,” a title bestowed half in jest and half in acknowledgment of his improbable ubiquity. Yet when he sits down for another podcast interview, Bolduc does not speak like a man tallying records. Instead, he offers a simple greeting to the newest qualifiers: “Welcome to the family.”

The phrase lands with the weight of ritual. In the NTDC-verse — a world of early‑morning practice lots, quiet camaraderie, and the shared understanding that mastery is a lifelong pursuit — family is not a metaphor but a structure. If this is a family, then Bolduc is not its monarch but its elder sibling: steady, familiar, and always already there. The one who shows newcomers where the light switches are. The one who knows the ethos of the course by memory. The one who keeps returning, year after year, not because he must, but because the work still calls to him. Roland Bolduc: patriarch of NTDC’s permanent class.