How to Avoid Driving Tired: Essential Tips for Truckers
One of the biggest eye openers for me after finishing truck school and beginning my over the road training with Schneider were the length of the workdays. As a trucker you will be expected to drive up to 11 hours a day over a 14 hour on duty period. This is up to twice as long as someone who works the standard day job.
Why are Truckers Required to Work Such Long Hours?
This is not an easy question to answer but it comes down to making money for the truck. The longer a truck runs each day the more the company and the driver will make. Trucks that sit around are making no money. In fact, they are losing money. So, it is in the best interest of your company to run you your max allowable hours each day which regrettably happens to be around fourteen. This leaves only 10 hours left to eat, sleep, and do whatever else you need to before you start your next long shift.
When you are running 12-to-14-hour days 6 days a week it will eventually catch up to you and you will become a walking truck zombie as I like to call them. You will always be tired except for the first few hours of each day. The mind and body are not designed to drive a truck day in and day out for weeks or even months at a time. And the 1 day off a week you get will help you recover from your week some, but it will never be enough.
During my trucking career I was tired every single day after a certain point in the day. Let me repeat that. After driving 7 or 8 hours I no longer wanted to drive, and it was a chore to keep driving. I had to psych myself up to make it past that 10th driving hour and even run up to 11 hours that day behind the wheel.
8 Hours of Sleep is Mandatory as a Truck Driver
One thing I learned quick as a driver is you better get a good night’s sleep. This is critical to being able to stay alert and keep your eyes open the next day while driving your big rig. I have run with as little as a few hours up to 6 hours and every time I was too tired to drive after several hours. When this happens you can either try to tough your way through it only if you feel like you can do it safely or you pull over and take a nap if you feel like you have reached the point of it being a safety issue. Every driver out there on the road faces these hurdles every single day. Only they have the power within them to know when they are too tired to drive safely. It is up to you to protect your own life as well as the lives around you and that is a big responsibility. There is an old saying in trucking and that is no freight no matter how important is worth your life.
Everyone may be a little different but if you deprive yourself of sleep the previous night or even nights it will eventually catch up to you and you will be unsafe on the road. There is no amount of coffee, loud music or chewing gum that will enable you to keep driving safely without getting some sleep first. If you find yourself starting to make mistakes out there because you are tired, it is already too late. You should have pulled yourself off and parked prior to nodding off or running your truck out of your lane a couple of feet.
Things That Will Prevent You From Getting Enough Sleep
It is important to be aware of the stuff out there in the trucking world that may interfere with you getting that important 8 hours of sleep each night. In my experience here they are. Your truck may need repaired. So, it is sitting in the shop line at the truck stop but they cannot see you for 5 hours. Or worse it is in the shop, but you cannot sleep in the truck when it is hot, and they are banging on things. By the time, your truck is ready your 10-hour break is over, and your company expects you to truck on. This is an all-too-common occurrence, and you have to walk a fine line when dealing with these situations. The best solution is to stay on duty with your clock while your truck is being worked on, but your company may frown upon this, and you will definitely lose up to a day’s wages for the truck sitting around. Some drivers will place their clock off duty while it is being repaired. Afterall there are only so many hours we can run each day and wasting 6 hours in a shop will eat into your miles. This is not the recommended route as for one it is not legal and two it will end up making you drive tired because it just extended your shift.
Your Company Flips Your Schedule
Here Is another common reason you will end up running tired while driving down the highway. You just finished your previous load and shift, and it is 11PM. Your company informs you your next load is at 6PM the next day. You are tired and go to sleep around midnight and wake up at 8AM. All truckers have dealt with this. If puts you in a dilemma and will force, you to drive tired. By the time, your 14-hour shift starts at 6PM you have been awake for 10 hours. There is no way you will not end up being tired by the end of shift. Usually what I had to do is pull over and take an hour or two nap somewhere along the route when I got too tired to drive for Amazon. As they flipped my schedule around quite a bit from days and nights and vice versa.
The Truck Next to You is Too Loud to Sleep
Here is another common reason a trucker will not get enough quality sleep before his or her shift starts. You are parked in the middle of two refrigerated trucks, and they are so loud you can feel the vibrations running through your body. It was hard for me to sleep next to one of these loud trucks at a truck stop. You better have a good set of earplugs, or you will be waking up every 5 minutes by the sound of these reefer trucks turning on and off all night. The next day you will feel like a zombie from having not caught enough quality sleep.
The simple solution to not drive tired is to make sure you get at least a full 8 hours of sleep the night before. Sometimes easier said than done. But fighting off sleepiness while you are driving is not fun and it certainly is not safe. This is one of the secret weapons to being a better truck driver and it will even let you enjoy the job a lot more when you are well rested.
