Changing shifts so to speak

If you can't sleep; guzzle Nyquil or any brand of the stuff.
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Ephedrine is a decongestant and the side effect is insomnia.
I get them at Walmart Pharmacy; have to sign for them.
Don't need a prescription, but still have to sign for them.
Take two and drive all night.
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I've lived on both for months at a time. They're both legal.
That stuff is golden for reefer drivers.

 

You are learning how important it is to sleep.

When you wake up, you have around 16 hours of awake time which is hard wired into most all humans. The coming of night brings on chemicals like Melatonian etc into the blood to set you up for sleep which is required for very life itself.

If you can tell us more about that waiting all day we can understand you better and give you a idea how to improve on that. If you sit all day waiting by the phone or shipping office or whatever while awake. You are NOT going to make it wherever by next morning on time. There is no way.

Which is why loads delivering overnights short hauls are the hardest in this industry. Wait all day to load then drive all night and repeat the afternoon reloading. Its impossible.

Back to the waiting. You have to learn to sleep while waiting. You can set your cell phone to alarm at the end of your sleeper berth time period. Then go to bed. Nothing short of fire or lawman on your fuel tank is allowed to disturb you. Unless it is the shipper or reciever telling you they are ready.

Its very chaotic.

My work around is simple. Load in Yakima WA for example and have 6 days to be in Boston about 3000 miles away. During that 6 day period in trip planning I know appoximately where I will be sleeping in the berth on each of those days and nights.

When you have your sleeper berth curtians closed, the window shades closed tight and so forth that berth should be in absolute dark. Thats one way to get some sleep. I do the same thing here at my home in the bedroom with thermal blankets over the one window. It makes it dark enough so I can sleep either by day or night. There is nothing for me to do or any place I need to be so it does not have the problem it was once to sleep day or night.

Again you cannot drive all night while waiting all day. What you need to do is change the appt time and date so you can go ahead and sleep and get going in the morning. But keep in mind every other day you will flip your sleeping to day time or night time.

The quality of your sleep matters too. If you were married and had a nasty wife barking at you on the phone 2000 miles from home with a stack of why are you not making money or other #####y problems that aggravating you. You are not going to sleep well. And you can thank her.

Or maybe your dispatcher sending a bunch of safety propaganda over your beeping qualcomm causing you to fall out of bed. Or better yet calling you on the cell. That problem is solved very fast with one sentance.

Thank you boss for calling me with this work related task, I will have to go repeat my sleeper berth time because you put me on duty for no particular reason.

Pull the battery from your cell. The world can wait. And it must. And go back to bed for another sleeper berth period.

As you get older into the late 30's towards 50, you might find a new problem. You have 10 hours to lay there but only slept 6 and well rested. You have 4 hours to doodle and waste time waiting on the logs.

Welcome to HOS. No one can ever build a HOS suitable for YOU. The 1962 version was the closest they ever got. And even then many drivers abused it because they will not have a job very long if they don't drive through the night after waiting all day. That included me. I drove all night to deliver after waiting all day. Or better yet, physically working to load a trailer to the floor all day.

Logbooks? Tossed into the bunk two or three different logs are needed to build one legal log. Thats why we have ELD today which makes it even worse believe it or not.

You are going to have to learn to sleep at a moment's notice at any time. If you cannot do this, you will build up a sleep debt that probably will get you someone or even a family badly hurt or killed later that week.

 

Local and find a job with the same start times.

People are going to come in here and tell you “welcome to being a truck driver, get used to it or flip burgers”. Don’t listen to them.

You can find a job that’s on a stable schedule.

I mean what Chinatown is saying is true... but that’s also the main ingredient of meth lol. Try and find a job where you don’t have to do that imo.

 

People can't sleep on demand unless they are tired all the time. I would say think about looking for a different trucking company. I was never for a rotation Driving shift like drive days then nights. I did it in the past some bit never like it.

Dry van freight is usually all day Driving because the only load and unload in the day. Automotive loads are famous for overnight runs.

That one trucking company K&B is known for sitting drivers all day and then telling them to drive all night. The short refer load are generally over night run run because lot of grocery DC and produce is delivered at night and shipped out in the morning for delivery.

Long haul reefer is pretty good because because the all Driving so you can set you time up better

 

I agree with you. This is total BS. Put in your year, find a way to survive, then find a company that doesn't have night dispatchers. Flatbed is a good option to avoid the changing schedule.

I went reefer with a company that does mostly coast to coast. If you're running 2-3000 miles on a load you can pretty much make your own hours. Of course not much home time, but so it goes. That was a long time ago. I'm owner op now.

But I hear you and agree this is total shiite. When I worked for JB Hunt I wrapped my Qualcomm in duct tape and hung it out the window so I could sleep. Those mofos called the Highway Patrol to come wake me up saying they were worried about me. Dam tards, mofos.

Do your time and find a better situation.

 

I recently turned down a load.
The reason? "I am not going to get on a night schedule".
Taking that load would have set me up to be running noon to midnight runs, and I won't do that.

I deal with it by controlling my own hours as much as I can.
Try saying NO! for a change, for those loads that won't let you get the rest that you need to be safe.

 

So what company do you work for?

 

Doesn't have much to do with the company or whether the company has night time dispatch. It's the nature of the business.

You can sleep all night, wake up fresh as a daisy at 08:00, and next load doesn't pick up till 21:00 . That happens with daytime planners. You can't get anymore sleep cuz you just got up, and it time to go to work when you are finally tired.

The only thing I can suggest is some loads have pick up and or delivery windows. Talk to dispatch to see what is possible on the load.

Eat a big meal at noon in the above example. Then sleeping in the afternoon is a little easier. Cheer up, the cycles do get broken and your schedule gets back to normal in a few days.