Denise Cote, a female truck driver whose name graced the pages of Truck News several times over the past few years, has passed away after a battle with cancer.

Cote succumbed to the disease Aug. 27. She first appeared in Truck News in a November, 2000 article about female truck drivers.

“The way I look at it, it’s a mans world. And I’m really happy that they make room for me, but I treat the guys like the way that I want to be treated,” she said of her employer, MacKinnon Transport. At the time, she was the owner of four trucks. She was known over the CB airwaves as Funny Face. She was an ambassador of sorts for female truck drivers.

In 2000, Cote suffered heartbreak as her sister and best friend Nicole was struck by cancer. She wrote a heartfelt letter to Truck News, thanking MacKinnon Transport for accommodating her while she had to work her driving schedule around medical appointments for her sister.

MacKinnon arranged for me to work weekends and gave me pin to pin runs, she wrote at the time. The dispatch office was great working with me on this. Sometimes there was weekend work and sometimes not, but they always thought of me. I want to thank all of the office staff, the O/Os, and the drivers for giving me the chance to work on the weekends. If it weren’t for them saving me loads for the weekends, I would have had a lot of trouble paying my bills.

Sadly, Cote endured her own battle with the disease just seven years later.