Sleep? How much do newbee's get while OTR?

Try to be a little more rational wth your posts . "truck fully loaded " . We're not talking guns here . Are empty trucks less dangerous ? So if a driver takes his 10 hours and doesn't get much sleep just what are your 2 attorneys going to charge him with ? There is no regulation requiring sleep ! One of the biggest complaints from OTR drivers is taking their 10 hour break , working a couple of hours in the morning , then being told to take 10 hours off during the day so they can drive all night . Perfectly legal for dispatch to order that .
If and when you get hired see how long you last demanding "enough sleep " . Dispatch will let you sit 2 or 3 days so you get plenty of rest .

 

I sleep when I'm tired, sometimes 2hrs sometimes 12hrs, usually the lesser as there are still only 24hrs in a day, so when I need to work 18+ of them doesn't leave much time for anything else. Like someone else said you get used to it. I get tired in the afternoon so I usually grab a nap this usually f##k's up my hours so I adjust accordingly. Some of the rules are stupid, to be legal I am supposed to drive tired good one

 

Just how should a trucker sleep? What should I do if I can not sleep more than 4 or 5 hours? It might take me 6 weeks or more to get a full 8 hours of sleep in one night.Do I have to park till I get 8 hours in?

 

That is why you have driver managers, et... They are supposed to keep up with that. If you are particularly tired one day let them know ahead of time that you need some extra rest. Driving is extrememly tiring no matter what anyone tries to claim. After you get some experience you will find your pace but it's not a regular schedule so don't get hung up on the night thing. It takes a little experience to be able to run day frieght on a night schedule when a lot of pickups and deliveries happen at daylight.

As the poster stated above you might deliver at daylight then they have you wait a half day for dispatch then tell you to go 100 miles to pickup at 6pm and you just stayed up till 10 am waiting on dispatch before you went to sleep then what do you do? That is just a made up example but not far fetched. That is where the RV mentality gets blown out of the water. In the above case if you are working for money you would deliver, no pre planned load? FInd a place to bed down and tell them to wake you with a phone call then hit the sack. Then you get all relaxed and ready for a good nap and the phone rings and they say, "Got you a load and it's only 100 miles away.

 

Become a Truckers Report forum moderator.
HOS (hours of service rules) you take 10 hours off.

 

You ARE a newbie. Or a big company driver. It wont take you long to get the GREED of money in your blood, LESS SLEEP = MORE MONEY most of the time. The more those wheels turn, the more money your family has to live on. If you cant deal with that and tuffen up, and train your body to deal with little sleep, then you dont need to even think of driving a truck. Just my opinion.

 

Well I struggled with this when I started OTR. I drove 6 months trying to be superman running for days on end with little to no sleep. I was out in PA on I-80 had been up for almost 72 hours with just a couple 1 or 2 hr naps. I was making good money and thought i was invincible till I woke up staring at the edge of a cliff I was about to drive off of. I luckily got back on the road some how and I pulled off the next exit and parked. I slept for about 19 hours before i woke up. I learned at that point that sleep was important. I tried sleeping 8 hours ( old HOS rules ) at a time from then on but it just didn't work. Some nights i would sleep 4 or 5 some 6 or 7. The key was i learned that I needed to sleep when i got tired and if i wasn't then i would sleep less. To this day I still do it this way. If i get tired after 2 hours driving I'll stop and take a nap. If i feel like running 800 miles without taking a break I will. You have to learn your limits and know your body and what it can/can't take.