The title of this book, The Attitude, Respect, Training, and Safety Aspects of Trucking, is directly in line with the content of the book. As a professional driver, you will need all of these aspects to complete your portfolio. If you take just one of these aspects out of the equation, you are opening the door for potential hazards throughout your career. Example, you can be the most skilled driver in the world and yet when another driver intentionally or unintentionally cuts you off and you allow this to have a negative effect on your attitude, then there goes safety out the window. When you are considering a company as a new employer, it is critical that you discuss with your spouse and your children the requirements of the company. How often will you be gone? One week? Three weeks? How much time will you have with your family between trips? A number of drivers make the mistake of not discussing these priorities with their family. It might very well be that a local driving job would be best for you and your family as opposed to a position as an over-the-road driver. You would probably be surprised as to what your family would say. One thing is certain. If you don't discuss this with your family, you will invariably have marital and children problems. Remember this. Trucking is full of variables. Reefer, dry box, flatbed, tanker, or any other type of trucking you choose, just keep in mind that while it's still trucking, each one of these is as different as night and day. And by all means, I want you to realize that trucking is not for everybody. It takes a special breed of persons to be a true professional driver. Is that you?

The title of this book, The Attitude, Respect, Training, and Safety Aspects of Trucking, is directly in line with the content of the book. As a professional driver, you will need all of these aspects to complete your portfolio. If you take just one of these aspects out of the equation, you are opening the door for potential hazards throughout your career. Example, you can be the most skilled driver in the world and yet when another driver intentionally or unintentionally cuts you off and you allow this to have a negative effect on your attitude, then there goes safety out the window. When you are considering a company as a new employer, it is critical that you discuss with your spouse and your children the requirements of the company. How often will you be gone? One week? Three weeks? How much time will you have with your family between trips? A number of drivers make the mistake of not discussing these priorities with their family. It might very well be that a local driving job would be best for you and your family as opposed to a position as an over-the-road driver. You would probably be surprised as to what your family would say. One thing is certain. If you don't discuss this with your family, you will invariably have marital and children problems. Remember this. Trucking is full of variables. Reefer, dry box, flatbed, tanker, or any other type of trucking you choose, just keep in mind that while it's still trucking, each one of these is as different as night and day. And by all means, I want you to realize that trucking is not for everybody. It takes a special breed of persons to be a true professional driver. Is that you?

First Published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Human Factors and Ergonomics have made a considerable contribution to the research, design, development, operation and analysis of transportation systems which includes road and rail vehicles and their complementary infrastructure, aviation and maritime transportation. This book presents recent advances in the Human Factors aspects of Transportation. These advances include accident analysis, automation of vehicles, comfort, distraction of drivers (understanding of distraction and how to avoid it), environmental concerns, in-vehicle systems design, intelligent transport systems, methodological developments, new systems and technology, observational and case studies, safety, situation awareness, skill development and training, warnings and workload. This book brings together the most recent human factors work in the transportation domain, including empirical research, human performance and other types of modeling, analysis, and development. The issues facing engineers, scientists, and other practitioners of human factors in transportation research are becoming more challenging and more critical. The common theme across these sections is that they deal with the intersection of the human and the system. Moreover, many of the chapter topics cross section boundaries, for instance by focusing on function allocation in NextGen or on the safety benefits of a tower controller tool. This is in keeping with the systemic nature of the problems facing human factors experts in rail and road, aviation and maritime research– it is becoming increasingly important to view problems not as isolated issues that can be extracted from the system environment, but as embedded issues that can only be understood as a part of an overall system.