Regroup

Another busy week is over and I have two days downtime to regroup. As a truck driver, putting in 70 hours a week is the norm. It's one thing when running the road to put in that many hours and you have a sleeper behind you as opposed to running with no sleeper, and that's what's called a day cab. When OTR (over the road), you can climb into bed any time...once you pull into a rest area, truck stop, or the customer's place. When in a day cab, however, you still have to get back to the hub, or workplace, and go home from there before climbing into that nice comfy bed...unless you're on a long run and get to lay over at a motel, which I don't.

Unfortunately, some people live quite a distance from the hub and that's lost sleep. How I wish there were different DOT (department of transportation) Safety Regs for local drivers that would take the drive home into consideration, such as getting a couple extra hours before reporting back to duty. One might wonder, in passing, about the lack of sleep of truck drivers. Well, we drivers can sure tell ya what the reality of it all is.

However, the bright spot in all this is there is a paragraph that protects us should we wish to utilize it. In plain English, it simply gives us the power to tell the company we work for that we are unsafe to drive from lack of sleep, illness, or emotional upset and we may exercise that rule to not drive and endanger ours and other lives. By rights, the company cannot fire or suspend us for making that call. If only more drivers would use that rule. So many accidents would not have happened had they done so. Just my thought for the day. Have a good one everyone!