Profile For Brett Aquila

Goodbye everybody. Enjoyed my short time here. Back to practicing offset backing.

Take care Jay! All the best!

Thank you Brett! Good stuff to know going forward. By the way, I know I never said this enough, but Thank You for creating and managing this super awesome site for so many years! I will certainly miss this being a part of my routine things to check in on from time to time. Best of luck with your future endeavors! I do hope you will be a regular participant with the rest of us on whatever site(s) we end up migrating to over the next few months and years, I've always enjoyed your (sometimes) spicy take on things and your candid replies to the many topics that have been discussed here over the years.

Thanks, RJ! I really appreciate that.

If you guys come up with a new site, I'd like to pop in to say hello if you'll have me. I've learned many hard lessons over the years about running a massive website and business like this, and I wouldn't mind helping anyone learn those same lessons a much easier way.

I think these questions would be a great candidate to create an Anki deck or a set of decks. I'd be happy to work on that if you can share them in a csv or json file. We could make the decks available as a temporary solution until a new High Road or other such system can be created and shared.

That's a good idea and one I'll certainly consider. I have a good bit of mopping up to do in the coming weeks, so I'll archive everything and export some user data if people want it. The High Road questions would be a super useful tool, especially considering they each contain the snippet from the CDL manual containing the answer.

There are 822 questions, and I created them all from scratch. That's plenty to keep people busy!

Have you considered a contact form linked from the farewell page?

Yeah, but I'm gonna have my email address on there instead. That way I don't have to create and serve the form, manage the spam, store everything in a database, and then keep track of new entries. People can just email me and I'll let Gmail do the heavy lifting.

I'm definitely interested to create something and have even started looking at how to best move forward, I'd love to have an MVP up and running before the end of the year.

Let me know if you do! I'll link to it.

Finally, I was thinking about creating a web form where anybody who is interested, can enter their contact information so we can proactively reach out with new site information. What do you think? would that be something you would be willing to link from the farewell page, even if only for a set period of time?

Yes, I would link to that.

Anyone who has resources they'd like a link to can let me know. I'll keep updating the farewell page as time goes on. The version that will go up tomorrow will only be the first draft. It's easy to update anytime.

On the contrary, I'm actually very happy for Brett! I know what an ordeal he's gone through to get to this decision...I've faced similar struggles and it's really liberating to finally move on.

It really has been a personal ordeal over the past few years. I've wrestled with what to do about this website day and night. Not to mention, this caps off my entire adult life in this industry from the time I was 21. It's been just over 32 years of trucking in one capacity or another.

I consider him a true friend.

You're the best friend I've never met. I've always felt that you and I are kindred spirits. We've had some truly great mentors over the years, but I always thought that you were the most extraordinary mentor we've ever had, including myself.

Your wisdom and life experience have shaped this community and me in ways words can't fully capture. I really did try to emulate your way of speaking to people, but as a New York Italian with a sharp tongue, I could not have been more different than a laid-back Texan whose effortless style and genuine empathy for others made a huge impact on people.

I could never thank you enough for everything you've done.

Brett, on your exit page please include a link to my book at Amazon, and my blog, Life As A Road Warrior. (Lifeasaroadwarrior.blogspot.com) It's been basically inactive, but I may try to revive it. I too am surprised by the number of silent readers we have. Maybe some of them would enjoy following my blog posts if I can keep them interesting.

It will be on there. You can count on it.

Ya know, these past two weeks made me realize how many long-time members were silently reading in the background regularly. I do have a way to track the 'last login time' for each member, but I never looked at it much.

I kinda wish people would have posted more instead of just reading along silently. This place would have remained far more active over the past few years, rather than getting only a few posts each day. That's kind of a bummer. It made the place feel empty, even though I could see in the stats that we were still getting thousands of visits per day.

I use Nostr, a new social network primarily aimed at tech enthusiasts and Bitcoiners, and they always encourage everyone to say 'good morning' and 'good night' every day. I don't do that because I respond regularly to others, so I'm always active. But now I see why they say that. The place feels empty if people aren't making their presence known.

Well, I learned something even on the last day!

You're a fantastic success story, Heavy C, and we've certainly appreciated having you all these years! You're at the top of your game, and you deserve all the credit for that, but I'm thrilled we were able to guide you in the beginning to get things rolling.

You can still reach me at brett@truckingtruth.com if you need to. That email will remain active indefinitely.

Take care of yourself and stay safe out there!

Im going to have a look at the link you posted a few replies back. I'll shoot you an email. Either tonight or tomorrow. Im buried trying to balance moving loads and getting all the prep work done that was supposed to have been done already when I got my truck.

Sounds good, Davy. No rush. I'm closing the site tomorrow, but I'll still be reachable by the same email.

Thanks again to all the well-wishers. Very kind of all of you to say so many nice things. It means the world.

I thought we'd get a few people in here looking for advice on moving to a new site, or to give me a link so I could include it on the farewell page.

I'll still be reachable at brett@truckingtruth.com if anyone makes it happen.

Because of my "I'd rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it" mentality, I've gone through every single page of the High Road Training 2.0 and literally copied and pasted it. The result is a whopping 317 page Word document, minus the multiple choice questions.

Man, I feel bad you went through that. I wish I had known. I almost didn't have the heart to tell you that most of the materials in the High Road are just the CDL manual converted to web pages, which can be downloaded for free from any DMV website. The CDL manual is what the High Road teaches to help you pass the CDL written exam and obtain your permit.

The magic of the High Road lies in the algorithms I created, which serve the review questions throughout the program, ensuring a constant rotation of the questions you need the most help with at any given time.

Actually, the 'Logbook' and 'Weight & Balance' sections we created ourselves from scratch; the rest can be downloaded from DMV websites.

I think the questions themselves would be the best part of the program to use because each question contains a snippet from the CDL manual with the answer included, making them excellent flashcards. That would be far more effective than just reading the manual and trying to memorize everything.

If someone does create a new website to continue the mission, I would be willing to help out by sending over some materials. The new website wouldn't have the ability to recreate the High Road or the functionality of this website, but at least it could offer materials for download or copy/paste into the forum.

That hits hard, Bobcat_Bob. I feel ya, man.

I don't like having to close it down, but I hope you guys will continue on at a new site. There is only a small percentage of people in the trucking industry who truly meet this community's standards, so it has always been a truly special place.

I was always glad to hear so many of you exchanged numbers and became friends over the years. Between word-of-mouth and a link I'll put on the 'farewell page' for the website, I'm confident the community will rebuild quickly. I'm going to redirect every page of this website to the farewell page, so anyone who gets sent here in the future will see the link to the new site. We still get thousands of visits per day, and will for a good while, so I think the new site will populate quickly.

I'm hoping to hear something here in the forum about a new gathering place. Even if no one gets it up and running by the time we close on Wednesday, Oct 1, I'll still be in contact through my brett@truckingtruth.com email, so whoever starts it up can notify me of the address, and I'll post the link on the farewell page.

You guys could also create a Facebook Group for free with minimal admin needed.