Very true. I learned the same way. Actually a lot of "trial and error" when I started too. Nothing against Mark Freeman, I wish you well, but there's a lot more to driving a truck than most people realize, just my opinion. Not on this site of course, but the general public has no earthly idea what it's like...none. I've been doing it a pretty good while too, and the job related stress is enormous but you can't let it get to you. Did you know the average life expectancy of truck drivers is way lower than for everybody else? Yeah. In the 80's I read where like 90% of truck drivers smoked, might be less now. You don't eat healthy, much as you try, and you never really get proper rest, even if the FMCSA folks say you do- you just don't. And you've still got to be proffessional even when the teenage girl on the cellphone cuts you off then gives you the middle finger because you were there. And when you're already tired but you've got to go because the customer's out of material and they'll have to shut the plant down if you're not there at 7:00 am the next morning. Then when you get there they have pallets of "the material" they were about to run out of stacked up to the ceiling-i've heard that one many times. And Bob's got to be professional when he has to chain up 13 times on a run...then do the same thing the next night...and the next. And Mark, when he has 13 stops in New York and New Jersey in all that traffic, 4 wheelers cutting in front of him, trying to pass on the left, right, underneath, over top, anyway they can. Oh wait- that's a bad example, he loves that stuff. Traffic is getting worse all the time, everywhere. Middle of the day now is like what rush hour used to be. All kinds of weather, traffic, a-holes in 4 wheelers, heavy traffic, mountains, traffic, the DOT, traffic, weigh stations, heavy traffic, securing and tarping flatbed loads, worrying about reefer temps, delivering to a grocery warehouse and having to unload your own trailer or pay someone else to do it after sitting the all evening and half the night, picking up at a steel mill and sitting all evening and half the night then hearing you've got to be 600 miles away by 7 am with that load or "they'll have to shut the plant down", leaving on a beautiful Sunday afternoon when everybody else is grilling a nice sirloin in the backyard- it all contributes to the stress of driving.