The Hidden Lives of Long Haul Truckers (NPR's Talk of the Nation)

REBECCA ROBERTS, host: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Rebecca Roberts, in Washington. Neal Conan is away. Maybe this has happened to you: You're driving down the highway. You have to pass a big rig, but you can't because another truck is in front of you and won't accelerate.

Or maybe a truck surges past you, cutting you off just before a merge. Cue the road rage, some colorful language, maybe you even reach out of a window, hand equipped with an indecent gesture.

When the whale of a semi surges past your minnow-sized car, it may not be your first instinct to consider the person in the cab. Dan Hanson, a fleet manager in Belle Plaine, Minnesota, wrote a piece for the Minneapolis Star Tribune explaining that there may be a lot of things going on in that driver's life, things you may not realize...

http://www.npr.org/2011/08/25/139948705/the-hidden-lives-of-long-haul-truckers