Need Advice on Urgent situation, scheduling situation.

Looks like i Need to Clarify what i meant by sleep on command.

How many of you have driven a good portion of a day or night, and are now parked. How many have sat in the drivers seat, or layed in bed for anywhere from 30 min. to 6 hours? Knowing you have to be up to drive the rest of your trip to a drop or pickup.

Drivers have been doing this for years and your not the only one who has has nights or days they cant sleep or get to sleep. Being a truck driver we have a strange sleep schedule due to TIME ZONES. I will admit I have had times that i couldn't fall to sleep when i wanted to. Its the nature of the beast, If your wanting a 9 to 5 drive. You need to find the Job that will offer this. Trucking is not a simple 9 to 5. With Sleeping schedules that are regular for your likening.

You can ask any OTR driver worth his salt, about his schedule and sleep patterns. I can promise you wont get the same schedule between 5 drivers.

Its a job if you want to do it, learn how to work the job to best benefit your lifestyle while doing said job.

 

Go flatbed. Problem solved.

 

I’m probably not the best guy to ask.

7 years running team, I drove nights.

5 days, 6000 miles as a team. I’d drive a lot of her hours - 14 hours some days. When head hit pillow, I was out. Exhausted.

On our 2 days off, I’d function during the day, then nap 4 hours in the afternoon before heading out again.

I’d stop and nap with her if I got tired at night - but I’d be lying to say it was ever an easy job.

Not much help, I know. Just trying to say this isn’t an easy occupation.

 

Trucking companies often act like drivers are machines who can switch our sleep off and on during supposed "breaks." And like we never need to do laundry or eat or get up in the middle of the night to take a piss and then it's tough getting back to sleep.

If you can't get adequate rest and it happens over and over, then quit and go to another company before something bad happens. Why should you have to feel like crap all the time? We are in a profession where they're always hiring. If the work conditions are unacceptable, then leave.

Make demands first...then leave if the demands aren't met.

 

The few times I ran team, I could not sleep much at all. I would lay in the bunk maybe nap a little, but most of the time I would be awake. What I could do and it worked well for me was I rested, seems like I was just as well rested as if I would have been sleeping like a baby, I guess I am lucky I could do that.

 

Apparently the government has the same idea(being machines)HOS is proof of that.

 

You’re here because the schedule is giving you problems. It will catch up with you eventually. Your dispatcher sits on a desk and does not care about you. He/she cares about the load. If you quit another sucker driver will take your place.
Plan your life accordingly.

 

Unless it gives you the squirts

 

It is not just trucking related for weird shifts. I rough necked on the relief crew on a rig for a while back in the 80's. We worked 2 days daylight towers, then two evening towers then two swing towers, then off two days. lol
It was at least two days a week I never went to bed, working that shift.
One of the mines here works what I think is called the dupont shift, may be wrong about the name, but you work 4 days on days, then off a couple then 7 days on nights then off 3 or , then so many days an days again and off only one. It is a crazy deal, but at some point every month you are off 7 days at one time and the only other thing I know of good about it is that they give you your schedule for a year at a time, so you know exactly which days you are off for a year. I know a guy in OK who works in a power plant with the very sane schedule.

 

I have to drive variable schedules day and night and it changes every week.

So I learned well the symptoms of fatigue and which symptoms my body shows first. Driving tired and driving fatigued are different. I start seeing shapes and colors on the road, jerks, and tend to slow down. If that happens I know half my brain is already falling asleep and I should shut down. The shapes and colors are my brain dreaming.

I read some motorist that sleep drove recall the next day dreaming and driving both. But while its happening a lot of people don't realize it. It creeps up on ya.

So I just did my best, if its not enough they'll say something. But they never did. And me sleeping on command is hard but gets easier as time goes.

My trainer slept around the clock on our resets somehow. I wondered if the guy was dead. Lol. But he said he was fine it's how he catches up.

Now I can usually sleep before I drive at least a few hours if needed even in a moving truck. But if I see Daddy Duck dancing in the road in front of me, I'm stopping no matter what.

The other thing with me I learned is once fatigue symptoms show, a nap will not fix me, I'm done driving at that point. A nap will only have fatigue back in an hour or two. Its better for me to just start my 10 than drag it out.