Can you drive at night?

It's actually pretty easy to control when you drive once you get the hang of working your clock and hours to your benefit. Dispatchers can only give you loads based around when you have time so the trick is to ensure you only have time when you want to have time.

Easiest explanation is an example. I'm a morning person, I like starting my day around 3-4am. If I had a load that delivered at 3pm, I would drive to withen an hour of the reciever the day before (if I could get that close). Then leave around 3-4am on the day of delivery, even if I was only 100 miles away. I would just drive until close to the reciever and park to wait for my appointment time. This started my 14, forcing it to end early and keeping any dispatchers from giving me a load over night. I maintained my preferred sleep schedule. To extend this a bit further, I would ensure that waiting time didn't hit 8 hours to prevent a split shift allowing over night driving.

 

I prefer 5:00 pm till 4:00 am roughly. 4:00 am, I’m ready for sleep, enjoy it best that way. Unless I’m really rested up, I’m ready to sleep around 2:00-4:00 am, regardless. No fear of oversleeping, no alarm. Works for me.

 

Not to mention how easy it is to find parking when your 11 runs out by 3pm, especially when heading west. Get those time zones turning back the clock and at 2pm you have your pick of the litter when it comes to parking at a truck stop. Find a spot that allows a straight path out of the truck stop at 3am.

 

Different strokes for different folks. That feels like to much sitting around not making any money.

 

Another minus to driving overnight is weather and fog. One time I hit a deer because by the time I saw the deer on my headlights I couldn't do anything. And that deer remodeled my fender.

I do understand some people have an issue with vision. That's why I do not flash my high beams to signal that people are clear to come back over to the right. Many people on the roads are unaware or just do not care that some folks have an issue with vision.

For me personally it just works out better because I do not have an issue with vision. The weather can worry me sometimes and it slows me down. I'm not claiming to be any super trucker here. Especially with fog, it tends to slow me way down. One time in Idaho the fog was so bad I slowed down to about 25 mph on the interstate and decided to get off the road. So that impacted my travel.

For me overall the pros outweigh the cons. Naturally I've always been more awake at night. Or at least I am in a happier state of mind because I like being awake at night. So perhaps I am going to be more forgiving of mistakes. That could be it too.

Yes drunk drivers are a problem, and other fatigued truckers, too. Irregular speeds and swerving in and out of their lane. One time I flew up on this car that was travelling at about 35-40 MPH on the interstate with no hazards. It gave me a bit of a surprise, and when I passed that car I lite them up with my air horn. One of the few times I have used that thing.

It's easy for fatigue to sneak up on you while you are driving over night and sometimes you can be "sleep driving" and you may not even be aware of it. That's why if you decide to roll overnight you know the symptoms of fatigue and also know which symptoms appear for you first. In my case it's the "black dog" and jerking.

Overall though, for my own experience I like night time driving better. It really irks me when people pass me then abruptly lane change back in front of me, blocking my vision from what's going on up ahead for no reason. That happens a lot more during the day per truck than it does at night.

I appreciate you not holding my experience against me, but your experience does count and it's obvious you understand the business

 

As I have stated many times now, my last day as an active driver was in Dec 2012. There is much about driving I miss. Some I don't miss at all. One thing I do miss is speaking to the new drivers and having them ask me questions about this job. In the time since I have lost touch with a lot. Today I could not advise someone about a scale. I understand a lot of road projects are finished now.

You're OK with me. I much rather come off as someone easy to approach that won't get judgemental over trivial things. One more point, while I do have decades of experience driving, I never knew it all! One thing that puts me off even here on TTR are drivers that purport to have all these vast years of driving, then over time, you can start to spot obvious problems that lead you to speculate on their bona fides. They try to dazzle you with their brilliance, but in reality, are doing otherwise. Some I even doubt are real truckers, just trucker wannabees!

 

@Lostmykey

Lol... Love the screen name. With a name like that you should enjoy the many "I locked myself out of my truck" and "Where do you keep your spare key" threads on this forum.

 

Ehh, yes and no. Really the only times I had to do stuff like that was after hometime to get back on my normal schedule. Outside of that, it was either rare, or I was already running recaps so it wasn't really any lost time as it just let me use the hours on my next trip.