What makes a Truck Driver a Truck Driver?

I have asked this same question for most of my truck driving career. Because if anyone has had to ride for 11 hours in a tractor trailer, especially one that is governed below the posted speed limit then you know it seems like takes forever to get anywhere.

Or maybe it is when you have drove 11 hours and you and 10,000 other trucks have to park, and you pull into 20 truckstops to find a parking place only not to find one and have to continue on until you do find a place to park.

I know what it is. It is because we get to park in a truckstop and go inside and sometimes pay to take a shower! Or better yet is when we have to pay to park! But we go inside and pay to take a shower, and have to take a shower in everybody else's filth! I have actually taken showers before and felt cleaner before showering then afterwards.

Then there is always the fine luxury of having too eat in the same truckstop. Because we have already driven over the 11 hour driving limit because we could not find a place at one of the nicer truckstops, so we had to settle for Joe Blows truck stop! If you are lucky you won't catch something from showering, and you won't get food poisoning from eating the half cooked meal that you have to settle for.

Then we have to pay for it! Almost double the price of what you could eat at a decent diner, only because this was the only place left to park!

Then we get too sleep, if you can without being bothered by a lot lizard who keeps banging on the side of your truck wanting to know if you need some company.
After which we have already spent over "our" budget for the day because we had to park here at Joe Blows truck stop.

Then 10 hours later (sometimes sooner) we get to get up and take off driving for a company who has a 90 mile and hour dispatcher.
Or drive for a good paying company who has these dispatchers who only find 350 mile runs, but to horrible receivers who are only open certain hours of the day. Who gets twice as many trucks as they can unload, and then tell you there is no parking on their lot, that you need to come back the next day.

Then we get to go through the same horrible episode from the day before because you have spent almost all your hours at the said receiver.

I have been driving for 10+ years and still do not know why I wanted to be a truck driver for. I know what I said before I went to Driving school, but this was not true in the real world.