Timid concrete DIYer?

One of the structural engineers I spoke with advised me to reconsider a CMU wall built on top of a pier foundation, for two reasons:

1. I'll have to bring a concrete truck to the site at last twice: once for the piers, and again to fill in the CMU cells. The truck trip is as expensive as the concrete, he implied.
   
2. It'll probably be a lot easier overall to build forms for the wall and do one big pour than build a big CMU wall.
   

The subtext of #2 was that I was being a big weenie, should get over my fear of five foot high concrete forms (think of the hydrostatic pressure at the bottom!), and just build the thing properly. He pointed out there were several good ways to screw up a CMU wall, too, like dropping mortar into the cells and closing them off, or simply building it crooked.