Driving your truck long distances

With my first B I drove from Southwest MO to Phoenix AZ. That is over 1,200 miles one way and over 18 hours drive time. I did this in 1998....lived in phoenix for about 4 or 5 months and then drove back to MO. No issues except had to replace my thermo stat...it was old anyways. Other than that I used to put 400 to 500 a week on the truck. No problems ever. Unfortunetly after about 218,000 miles I had a head gasket go...traded the truck off then.