Advise on how to recover from waking up

^^THIS... in spades.

 

You kept it upright.

Call it a win lol

Happened to me once waiting to get loaded. I was in the seat and dozed off. Guy beside me pulling out and guy on the forklift going in the truck at the same time. I snapped awake and grabbed the trolley handle and stomped the brakes at the same time thinking I was rolling backwards and hit something. then realized I was locked to the dock and the engine wasn't running.

I don't wait to get loaded in the seat anymore. I'm too old for that much instant excitement.

 

If that's the first time that's happened to you, you've either been lucky or haven't been on the road very long. I lost track of how many times that's happened to me. But then again, I'm the Steering Wheel Nap Master.

 

Okay, so this was years ago when we didn't even run logs in the Canadian oil patch...

I was working for an oilfield service company out of a remote location in north-central Alberta. Because we were the only service company with a base and camp there, we got the lion's share of the work. The next closest service point was only about 160 km (100 miles) away, but the road was so bad that it wasn't unusual for the trip to take 4-8 hours. As we're getting close to spring break-up the activity level is getting insane... everyone is trying to get their drilling programs finished or properly suspended.

Working 36 hours straight was not unusual: check cement levels, order cement, blend cement, load cement bulker, haul cement bin to location, return to base, haul cement to location (maybe 2-4 loads), return to base, service pump unit, drive pump unit to location, rig in, do cement job, rig out, wash up, drive back to base, return to location to pick up cement bin, back to base... wash, rinse and repeat. Or sometimes we would just go from job-to-job and had to contract out a lot of the non-critical stuff.

We didn't even have time to do some of the critical stuff. I drove for nearly two weeks with a broken centring bolt on the front axle. We had to cross a creek to get to one well and the pump unit broke through the ice. When it did it broke on one side of the axle. So, the supervisor got some chains and boomers and we chained up the axle as near to straight as we could and off we go. The creaking under braking was a bit unsettling.

On top of that, none of our trucks had sleepers--there was no room--and some of these jobs would be as much as 6-8 hours drive. Our pump units were all straight trucks and maxed out both length and weight. The cement bulkers weren't too bad to sleep in as they were Internationals and had the cab heater under the passenger seat. It made a decent place to sleep as the top of the heater was beside, but lower, than the passenger seat and you could put your butt there, recline against the passenger door and put your feet on the driver's door. DON'T FORGET TO LOCK THE DOORS! The pump trucks were brutal though... KW C500, And there were often two of us in there.

Anyhow, we're heading back to base after one especially gruelling stretch. It's just me in the pump truck and the supervisor in his pickup. About two hours from base and we're both just knackered and can't go another mile, so we pull over at the intersection of a couple of lease roads and catch some shut-eye. I don't want a repeat of previous trips where I wake up at the fuel card-lock, sprawled across the seats, doors wide open, fuel nozzles in the tanks... and I have NO idea of when or how I got there.

After a few hours, dawn is just breaking and I wake up. I look in the mirror and I can see the supervisor still slumped over the wheel (never sleep behind the wheel ). So I roll down the road a bit, get turned around come rolling back up to the supervisor's pickup. Just as I give his truck a love-tap from mine, I flick on the brights and hit the air horn.





Two hours was just about the right amount of time for him to calm down.

Never sleep behind the wheel.

.

 

Ex-supervisor, I'm sure.

 

Much truth right here.

On that matter limit activities in the bunk to sleeping. Turn out the lights. Sleep as soon as you get sleepy or you miss the window when you can sleep. Sleep comes in 90 minute cycles.

 

I'm hoping that your reply is a smart arse reply and not a real honest reply

 

I sleep on the ramps. What's the big deal?

 

But yet you wear jammies

 

yeah I wear flannel in the winter and linen in the summer. It's the small pleasures in life. Mostly though I just sleep in my pajama bottoms.