Need Advice on Urgent situation, scheduling situation.

I guess I am not seeing the problem. If I understand it right, you got 8 hours sleep and you hav e9 hours to go before your shift starts. Just rest some during the 9, A lot of truckers schedule changes with the load of the day.

 

This isn't a thing where you can just do what you want, customer's needs come first. Learn how to handle sleep schedule changes better, but if you can't look for a 9 to 5 type work where you are in bed the same time every night. I get some people can't handle this, it is impossible for them to adjust to the sleep schedule.

 

Once you wake up, dont get out of bed. Or worst comes to worst, you could rub one out and go back to sleep

 

Or hit the buffet and get really full, it's no getting up after a buffet or heavy meal

 

If this is the nature of the account you are on and you cannot handle the different start times then switch to another account with the same starting time. Sleep patterns are different for everyone. The dispatcher could care less as long as you legally got your 10 hour break in.

 

To keep in the trucking industry.

You pretty much need to sleep on command. Your head hits pillow you should be asleep shortly.

Avoid doing activities in your sleeper till you can control your sleep pattern.

Examples ( don't watch TV or movies, play video games)

My wife hates when I come to.bed. my head hits pillow and I'm asleep in moments. Really pisses her off when I am asleep.before she's done talking to me.

It's a habit to train yourself, you never know when you will need to be tested before a load.

Good luck

 

I don't know if that is challenging, safe, or exhausting.

 

I say #### em! Find something that fits you.

 

People can't sleep on command unless they are tired. It's little trick people tell themselves and dispatcher. If You can sleep anytime your a good driver. I was told that. They like to say that so your always rested and ready to drive safely !

You can't sleep unless your tired. So if someone can sleep anytime they lay down they probably are tired and don't even know it.

Sound like your getting a bad deal. In my opinion. I drive basically the same hours every day. I start say 7 am then I can work till 9pm. Then take 10 hour off get back up at 7am. It sounds like you're being forced to take say 15 or 20 hours off then going back to work. Because of that much time off you get the weird rotating schedule. Then dispatch could care less and says thing like you can sleep 20 hour and get up and work 14 hours. All dispatch cares about if it legal and hides behind that. That's a bad deal in my opinion. Your not a robot.

Remember the Walmart driver and Tracy Morgan accident ? The Walmart driver sleep like 10 hour at home. Then was up all day. Then got in his Walmart truck for his 14 work schedule. So he was awake for about 23 hours. Then had traffic accident and killed one person. Tracy Morgan is lucky to be alive today. His log book was legal. Except New Jersey got him on some law about being awake 23 hour and driving. Walmart paid big money for not caring about that before. Today Walmart won't let that happen again. You can't work for Walmart and live 500 miles away from the DC and drive to work anymore.

I would look for a driving job were you work the same hours, like I do. I'm not sitting for 20 hours off just so dispatch can mess up my sleep schedule then tell me I'm supposed to work 14 hour. If I want to drive all night I would get job driving for FedEx or UPS.

What people don't say about driving all night is when you go home, you basically have keep the same schedule. So you go home and everyone else is sleeping at night and you still up doing nothing all night at home. I did some dedicated all night runs in the past. When I went home after driving all night you want do thing at home. That messed up you sleep schedule because you up like 23 hours. Not worth it in my opinion today.