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Expediter Carroll Bean, Jr. of Vermont has some issues on his mind and he wants to share his thoughts with his fellow drivers.

This long-time professional driver has pulled tankers to flatbeds to lowboys to vans and has hauled "everything except livestock." He's been there and done that, and is concerned about the state of the expediting and trucking industry.

"Within our network of friends, sometimes we'll be out of contact with someone for a long stretch of time and suddenly, one of us will call the other or run into each other on the road."

"I think it would make for a pretty dismal life out here if we kept to ourselves and never met anyone."

If you're always fatigued, it can be tempting to turn to herbs and other natural products to boost your energy. This tiredness should be diagnosed and treated by a medical professional, not with home remedies.

If you have replaced coffee or soft drinks with energy beverages that contain caffeine and a slew of vitamins and herbs, be careful. Not enough is known at this time about the combined effects of these ingredients.

Medical experts tell us the primary reason for the elevated incidence of back pain amongst truck drivers is the endless hours of sitting combined with the low frequency vibrations and jostling of the road.

Add to this a poor diet, the strenuous work of pulling on chains, tarps and cranking landing gear, jumping up and down from trailers and cabs along with fingerprinting all types of loads.

Today’s options for storing medical information range from simple wallet cards and medical jewelry to a tiny USB drive that plugs into most computers.

You can even get a radio frequency identification microchip placed under your skin, which is used to access your medical information in a database.

A U.S. Navy veteran of the Vietnam era, John was aboard the U.S.S. Yorktown during the recovery of the Apollo 8 spacecraft. He spent 29 years as a police officer (badge #11) with the Brick,NJ police department and was honored with numerous commendations for his service with the department.

He states, "A business plan is very important to show what your expectations are and what your goals are. It's critical to prove to a lender that you can make a go of it - after all, why would anyone invest many thousands of dollars in you without a likely return?"

"When I've put together business plans in the past, I've based my numbers on what other owner-operators have been doing and my own experience."

The total distance driven by commercial trucks in the U.S. exceeds 150 billion miles each year - equivalent to about 640 trips from the Earth to the Moon.

The average truck in the United States travels an average of 64,200 miles per year, the equivalent of driving almost two and a half times around the world. The average trip for heavy trucks is about 420 miles one way.

If you drive a truck for a living, you only make money when you're moving down the highway with a load. That basic tenet of trucking leads to another fact of the driving life: There are no sick days.

The fact is that truck drivers basically gut it out when they don't feel well—until they're just too sick to go any farther.

Food! It's one of life's essentials and for many, the stuff of which dreams are made. For the trucking gypsy, it's also one of the most important "benefits" of the OTR experience.

Sometimes it seems like life of the road is just one fast food place or greasy spoon after another, and then you find that great little hamburger joint, chili parlor or mom and pop place that makes your search for good chow all worthwhile....