Healthy Living On The Road

         It’s no great secret that truck drivers face some unique health challenges.  It seems like the more I get to know people, the more I hear about Type II diabetes, high blood pressure and CPAP machines.  It doesn’t take a lot of consideration to figure out why.  As a collective, we have gotten quite lazy.  I see more and more trucks parked on curbs at truck stops because the drivers are too lazy to go park in a legal parking place because that is farther from the building than they’re willing to walk.  I was walking across a customer parking lot to a shipping office once when a driver told me he would drive up there, he wouldn’t walk that far.  I kept quiet, but I was thinking “that’s why you’re shaped like a barrel and I’m not.”  I don’t mean to be so harsh, but collectively we’re doing this to ourselves.  No one is doing it to us.

It doesn’t help that truck stops are doing away with traditional sit down restaurants and replacing them with fast food.  Fast food is another problem, it’s insanely unhealthy.   You can get a burger on the dollar menu, but a salad can cost up to $7.  When I do stop at a truck stop with a sit-down restaurant, I am hesitant to go in because 1. I don’t like to call attention to the fact that I’m a woman by myself out here, and 2. The food is so overpriced it’s silly.  I spent $13 today on an omelet, 2 links of sausage and a glass of tea.  The food industry has made healthy food choices almost cost-prohibitive.  Aside from eating out of our trucks more, there isn’t much we can do about the food situation.  I personally tend to eat from the kids’ menu often, because not only are the prepared foods generally unhealthy, but portion control has gotten completely out of control in this country. 

So, what do we do?  I want to be healthy.  I try to be proactive.  The TA/Petro chain has a fitness room at many of their locations across the country.  I went into one and found a driver sitting in there watching TV because he didn’t want to watch what was on in the Drivers’ Lounge.  He left when I got on the elliptical.  I have a pair of rollerblades in the truck but with the way many drivers are racing through the truck stop parking lots, that can be scary.  As much as I do to try to be healthy, I know I’m not doing enough.  Society has gotten into the habit of making more excuses than effort.  The fact is, we must do something.  We’re committing slow suicide.  I don’t want to be one of the drivers that is found dead from a heart attack between the seats.

I’m always open to new ideas.  What are you all doing to try to be healthier?

Mt Shasta

          Is that not about the most beautiful scene you’ve ever seen in your whole, entire life?  I’m about 30 miles from the California/Oregon state line on I-5 tonight and this is the view from my office/efficiency apartment.  This picture would make an awesome jigsaw puzzle!

          It’s been almost 20 years since I’ve been up this way.  Freymiller’s freight lanes are changing, growing.  If you would have told me 6 months ago that I would be heading up to Portland out of Los Angeles I would have laughed you right out of the truck.  I expected to load going back east yesterday, but instead I’m going north.  How cool is that?

          Another cool aspect about this load… I get to see a woman I trained back in 2013 who has since gotten a local driving job so she could be closer to her family.  I’m looking forward to that visit.  I haven’t seen her in about 2.5 years.

          Little piece of useless trivia for you… it’s almost as far North to South in California as it is East to West in Texas.  797 miles up I-5, 879 miles across I-10.  There, you learned something today!  

Time management? Me Management!

                I’m disgusted with myself this week.  I pride myself on being detail-oriented.  It makes me a better driver; not better than anyone else, just better than I used to be.  It never fails though; every time I go thinking I’m better than I am, God shows me the error of my ways.

                I picked up a multi-stop load last Thursday in California that finaled out in Illinois on Monday.  I thought I had enough time to make it but I miscalculated.  I thought I would start picking up hours Sunday night at midnight but I didn’t start picking up hours until Monday night.  I was 4 hours away from the last stop when I realized I only had 3 hours left on my 70.  I sent a message in to dispatch and thankfully there was another driver coming south who could swap out with me in time so that the appointment could still be made.  After the swap was done, I sent in another message apologizing for the screw up.  Clyde didn’t sound angry with me.  In fact, when I first spoke with him, he laughed at me.  I think it was because I was being so hard on myself and because this isn’t the type of thing I do very often.  I’m pretty sure this is only the 3^rd time I’ve done something like this and the other times were early in my Freymiller career when I was still trying to figure out the HOS rules that had changed since my last driving job.

                I know exactly what I did wrong.  While I tried to blame the fact that I had routed myself to the 1^st stop so I didn’t have the exact calculations to the final and then I tried to blame the fact that I’d had the cruise set at 63… facts are facts.  What really happened is I rushed and assumed.  I rushed through the calculations and assumed I would be fine.  Rushing and assuming almost always gets me in trouble.

                Trust me, no one knows better than I that I am not perfect.  I’ve never striven for perfection but I do strive for excellence.  This week, I was definitely less than excellent.  I cannot manage time.  I can only manage the way I behave in any given amount of time.  I think it’s still safe to say I haven’t arrived yet.