Food service and sleep patterns

Like any other oddball shift work, it WILL take some getting used to. But then, the majority of trucking keeps very odd hours! Road drivers, unless they are line haul, most outfits get their loads by appointment, and deliver them by appointment. As long as you can get your mandated hours off, that is all that is necessary. So of course, the time will vary.

Now, as to the meat of your question, I've got to say, "it depends." I spent years working rotating shifts. Hated it, but that is the way it was. So I worked my sleep around the needs of the family, as well as around the job.
Once I got on a straight dog watch, then I pretty much scheduled my life to revolve around those hours, at least giving my internal clock a chance to get used to sleeping on a regular basis again.
You will need to try a few different patterns here, to see what works best for you. For some, (I'm one of them,) getting off work and immediately hitting the sack, was a good way of doing it. Other folks can't possibly sleep until they unwind a bit.
Often, when the kids had stuff going on that a dad just can't miss, I'd get home, sleep for a few hours, get up and spend afternoon hours with them at their various activities, then crawl back in bed for a couple of hours sleep before going to work. After doing it for a while, I discovered that this actually worked pretty well most of the time. I'd get most of my sleep in the day time, then get up and spend late afternoon, dinner and early evening with the family, then get my head down again for a while.
Other folks just get off work and do whatever needs to be done, and get sleep when they can. A recipe for serious physical problems later on in life, and likely some serious problems with tired driving right now.

You'll just have to try and see what works. You WILL be tired for a time, until you get your body and circadian clock reset.

 

I start at 2am. I usually get home between 10a-1pm, take a 1/2-1hr energy booster nap, then do whatever. Then go to bed around 6pm, get up at midnight, shower make coffee and head off to work.

I like the shift, really easy to schedule anything I need to do during the day. Also nice to start my day with no one on the road,,, relax, drink my coffee and wake up while enroute to my first stop.

 

My last bid was filled with 1:00am - 3:00am start times, I hated it. It took some getting used to, but I always felt the most rested if I didn't nap during the day. I'd try to lay down between 6:00pm - 7:00pm to get 6 to 8 hours of shut-eye. Of course, my days off consisted of me getting up WELL before daybreak - it would drive my girlfriend crazy when I stayed at her place or vice versa.

I bid 3:00pm - 4:00pm starts now, I'm much happier.

 

Yet another reason why i don't do foodservice anymore.............

Although one of the companies i was with had pretty normal hours.

 

But to answer the question, i would always try to go to sleep immediately after i got off from work irregardless of what time of day it was.

Sometimes this does not work very well----like recently i did a patch of linehaul for about a month. i would go in at 8:30pm and get off at around 7am-to 9am depending on traffic. That past month i could only sleep about 5.5 to 6 hours during the day even if i took sleeping pills. But it was the best i could do.

i think sleep in the daytime will never be as good as nighttime.

 

My recipe for day sleeping (which I'm doing these days):

1: Black-out the windows.
2: Overhead fan.
3: White noise machine.

Without the room dark, I could only sleep around 3 hours. No bueno.

 

I start early as well. Like tomorrow I'll be getting up about 1:45am and get to work 2 something and hopefully at my first stop by 3amish.

Now I sometimes take a nap after work and sometimes do not if I'm really tired I'll conk out for 3 hours, but I can't just sleep for 20 minutes. I usually go to be at a normal time I can't go to bed at 5pm in the afternoon can't do it. Earliest maybe 9pm I can do that. I'm not really an all night person, because I'll be honest I don't sleep well during the day, but I'm not a quick to bed either. If I had my way 10-12am are the times I like to go to sleep. When I worked for the beer company I crawled to bed about 10pm every night. Now I'm all over the place.

Really I'm a second shifter I would take an 11am-2pm starting time because I like going to bed late. working 2pm-10/11pm is fine with me. I tried that going to bed straight after work, for me that's not going to happen I can't do that. I also don't need a lot of time in the morning to get ready I just go.

I'm not big on doing stuff before work I save all my business for after work just how I am.

 

I really can't help you with waking up for early shifts. I've ran nights my whole career and decided to give days a shot when I switched to my current company. They have me on a 5:30am start time. I've been on it for the about 6 months now and I am still lucky if I can roll out of bed 10 minutes before I need to be out the door. Then I feel like a zombie for the first couple hours and no amount of caffeine does anything. I'm about to switch back over to nights ...


Good luck to you though! =D

 

I usually start 230 am, finish around 430 pm, get home at 6, eat and shower and in bed by 7, sleep 6 hours and repeat!