Night owls have more staying power

My guess is that the majority of drivers have to adapt to night time driving. With fewer vehicles on the road, traffic runs smoother and driving is less stressful.

As for construction, some places are now doing major construction during the night time hours. This is probably more the exception, though, than the rule.

Okay, drivers... am I correct?

 

I've always been a night owl...5pm to 3am is my best times of day. So when I started driving, I found that I liked the night loads much better than the day loads. I get REALLY tired around 2-4pm...and I'm not real crazy about getting up for the 5am loads (although that may be cause I stay up late!).

I have another friend who drives who CANNOT drive past 10pm or he'll be asleep at the wheel...so he works his loads around that as much as possible.

I think you have to get in tune with your own body clock (and a lotta folks don't have any idea when they first start driving because most jobs they've worked till then...or even when we were in school...don't give you an option of when to be awake...so people are just used to HAVING to run days.

You DO have to watch what little traffic IS on the roads from 1am to about 5pm because there are typically more drunk drivers on the road, along with a lot of folks NOT used to driving nites so they're more likely to be falling asleep at the wheel. But you just learn to watch for the signs...swerving, slower than speed limit driving, etc.

 

I am not a night person, but was often forced to drive most of the night due to the delivery schedule. As a team driver, I was forced to follow the schedule set by my lead driver with the result that I worked the midnight to 6 a.m. shift (and the noon to 6 p.m. shift). It was tough, but I was much younger then. Eventually, I was able to chose regional jobs that allowed some sleep every night. I always chose sleeper cab jobs, and turned down a couple of very lucrative union opportunities because of their tight overnight terminal to terminal schedules. I always wanted to be able to reach back and touch that pillow to know it was there if I needed it. Road construction and traffic congestion had nothing to do with it. It does make sense to get up early and beat the morning rush hour to a destination, or go into the city early and sleep at the consignee's. While driving for a beer distributor, I usually had midnight pickup appointments at the breweries. However, my employer did not require me to return with the beer immediately, so I slept after loading and took my sweet time getting back to our warehouse.

I discovered another thing about my circadian rhythm. If I get up at 4 a.m. and try to drive, I will be back in the sleeper before 6 a.m. This often happened when leaving home early in the morning and getting about as far down the road as the first rest area. You can't fool Mother Nature. So, I was quite handicapped compared to most super truckers. Yet, I managed to work around the sleep requirement for 40 years.

 

I am definitely a night owl. As I tell my friends, I sleep during regular business hours. It's 6am here and I'm still up so...case in point.

I do know that when I went on a long road trip a while back in my car that I tended to fall asleep a lot earlier and wake up at like 9 or 10am. (Trust me, that's early.) I'm wondering if it's because I'm exposed to the sun more or if it is something else?

 

I have a theory. I'm what you would call a night owl I suppose. But, I don't think night owls are really night owls. I think we are people that follow more of a 28 hour day in our cycle then a 24. Over a cycle we'll go to bed later and later until a full day cycle has revolved over the course of a week or so. Since our daily rythm is longer we're more awake after a specified period of hours as the study suggests but we also slumber deeply and sleep longer periods as well. The morning people seem to be just fine with 6 hours whereas I typically need the full 8, at least after a couple nights.

Also, morning people don't seem to know how to sleep 12 hours, believing it's wasteful. I can do that easily or even longer.

 

Just a night owl here.

I can get up and moving at 5am, and need a short nap by mid afternoon. But it will be very late before I can go to sleep that night.

I can leave out at 8 or 9pm and drive through the night, without a nap most times.

 

I think some of it is psychological too. I always enjoyed the clear roads, and that odd excitement of night driving, but as soon as that distant dawn light would creep into the sky, my body would suddenly know it hadn't slept all night (and probably the day before) and I'd really have to force the morning hours through or sleep.
Oddly, if driving from early morning on, an evening nap would be enough to get me through most of the night. Reversed, it just wouldn't work.

 

I think you might be on to something here. I usually need about 10 hours of sleep to be fully functional. It can be all at once or broken up into two intervals.

 

I can't sleep more than 6 hours at a time if I WANTED to! And I'm also one of those where I'm fine all nite, but I gotta pull over and shut my eyes for 15 to 30 minutes once the sun starts rising. After a power nap, I'm good to go for another 12 hours if I want to. Power naps work well for me, but I know a lot of folks who just cant run if they dont get their 8 hours or so.