Oh, brother, not again, please! I avoid truck stops and other truck drivers, in part, to spare myself further exposure to two classes of stories.
The first is the TRUCKER TRIUMPHANT, the driver who has just given the dispatcher, the cop, the truck inspector, the shipper, or the receiver righteous hell for some largely imaginary transgression, putting that person in his or her place, and demonstrating the driver's vast superiority.
The second is the TRUCKER AS ATLAS, carrying the world on his long suffering back, as exemplified by the linked article. Sorry folks, the trucking industry does not have a draft, we all volunteered.
As to governed speeds, there are two major factors other than fuel economy in play. Foremost in my life as a driver at the moment is
CSA 2010, a federal program assigning points to driver's licenses for all manor of failures, by which a driver may easily make himself unemployable. The other factor is insurance premiums. When too many of my coworkers got speeding tickets over too short a time, my employer's response was to cut back top speeds. Insurance premiums should not need explaining. Fleet aggregate CSA scores figure heavily in a safety rating that shippers pay attention to. Let that safety rating get too low and some of my companies best accounts are likely to go elsewhere.
