Avoiding Night Hauling....?

Animals are the only x-factor that really bother me doing night driving. I did a particular overnighter last year where I found myself on some back road south of I90 in SD. It was probably 1am or so and I came up over the crest of a curving hill at 55mph or so and found a loose HERD of buffalo running on the asphalt. As soon as I locked up my brakes to avoid killing this whole "home on the range" herd they all managed to run across. All but one that I #### you not stopped in the road and stared at me as if to say "you don't scare me". Needless to say I left to fleet pretty quick after that.

 

No company will accommodate your desire to not drive nights. The exception, is as an ADA accommodation for a disability, provided it is a reasonable accommodation and recommended by your doctor,,and provided you meet all other DOT fitness for duty requirements.. The company will still try to get around this as a Bona Fide OCC defense. But I'm getting a legalese on you now.

The real issue isn't driving at night, man. Driving at night, is amazing. Peaceful. You can have the best introspective moments with 80,000 pounds behind you, and being the only soul on the road for a 20 mile radius at 3AM. I had this amazing feeling one night, driving the Nevada desert in a milk tanker, with nobody around for an hour. Only the full moon light keeping me company, and the drone of the radio in the background.

Sleeping during the day? That's the real #### part of this. To tie this into my original idea of ADA accommodations and disabilities, you might have a hell of a time arguing that you can't work nights. You might have a very easy time, however, showing you cannot sleep during the day for medical reasons. Then, you can make the argument that, due to sleep deprivation issues, you're not safe to drive at night.

Then , you'll get wrongfully terminated. Have a savings and an alternative career in your back pocket for your legal battle. Don't be afraid to drive at night, its' the best.

 

Learn how to work the clocks and make them your friend.

 

Reverse question:
How would a company react if you told them that you only want to drive at night, and not during the day?

God bless every American and their families! God bless the U.S.A.!

 

Good question

 

Probably wouldn't hire you unless it's some 9 - 5 type city driving job.

 

I'm with him on this. Yea, it's hard to adjust. But, like he said I'd much prefer nights over days. We are both local drivers and roll through a major metropolitan area. It is much easier to negotiate city streets at night. And, rolling through a Southern California desert at 2 am when you started your shift 7 hours prior is awesome. All alone, just the tunes and the coyotes.

I never went OTR so I can't say if it's harder or easier but I'll say it's gotta be nice to have a sleeper behind you. I had a shift that was 600 miles a day with loading and unloading and had to do it legally under 16 hours. Most days were 15.25-15.75 hours. This was also a night shift and I had to sleep during the day with a wife and toddler outside the door. Trucking is hard. Nights, days, swing, graveyard, you've gotta be able to do them all.

 

I've driven nights for almost 2 decades. Yes, there are more drunks and animals at night, but there are a LOT FEWER car drivers. Cars are the major problem for trucks. With fewer cars you have more space to maneuver. You aren't pinned in by 3 cars on your left, a breakdown on the shoulder and a stopped car in front of you.

 

Here's another way of looking at the issue. Let's pretend you bought your own truck and got your own authority. Let's also assume you have some skills as a salesman, pound the pavement and put EFFORT into securing a GOOD customer.

Now let's suppose your customer also had a salesman, your friend, that put in some serious time and expense to get a good customer. That brand new customer is important for YOUR customer, it represents a significant amount of business and they can't screw it up. THEIR customer calls and says, "We have an emergency, we need 10000 widgets delivered at 6:00 tomorrow morning or our factory will have to shut down."

So your customer calls you and says, "Be here by 6:00 pm today, we have a HOT load that needs to deliver by 6:00 am 600 miles away."

What are YOU going to do? Refuse the load because you don't want to drive at night? Risk ALL that effort you put into getting that customer in the first place?

Remember, customers are HARD to get and EASY to lose.

Now I understand you are starting out as a company driver in a whole fleet of trucks. But you have to remember that ALL those drivers rely on great service from EVERYONE on the fleet. There are salesmen that got the accounts, and if you have never worked in sales let me tell you it isn't all rosy. It's hard work getting and keeping customers.

Now you come along and refuse to drive at night. You have now limited your usefulness to the fleet. I don't care how big the fleet, there will be times you are the only truck available to cover that hot night load. Now you refuse and stand on your principles that you think it is unsafe. What's that customer supposed to do? Call THEIR customer and say, "Sorry, we can't get it there tomorrow morning. I guess your factory has to shut down and 200 people are out of work tomorrow"?????

Nope. That shipper is going to call another trucking company and YOU just put a multi-million dollar account in jeopardy. Because that customer will remember who he can or cannot rely on for helping him take care of HIS customer.