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?