Robert Hallahan learned the hard way.
He began his trucking career in 1990 at the age of 18 doing local delivery work for Coca-Cola before briefly going over-the-road, then returning to regional work hauling gasoline tankers around Iowa, Wisconsin and Illinois. From there, he got into hauling liquid petroleum, and his hauls found him farther afield — down to Florida and other, warmer places in the winter. He then started hauling anhydrous ammonia and doing other tanker work.
Around 2000, Hallahan bought his first truck but “I lost my butt and went bankrupt,” he said. “I learned all the money from trucking didn’t go to you, it went to the truck. I learned the hard way. I was young and dumb.”
