Thinking about quitting...

Could be but it wouldn’t interest me.

 

FedEx and OD start in middle of the night. Give your body a month on thirds, you will get used to it. Trust me. Been doing 3rds for years.

 

....i know what you mean, did gas for 12 years at nite, good for doing the job with less hassel , but going to bed at 2:30 -3 pm really does take awhile to get used too

 

have you looked into Pavestone/Quickrete? S I L works for them and seems to be pretty content. They have several locations in the DFW area

 

Absolutely correct !!!

 

Forget the social life for the time being.

I lost so many friends when I started. Especially after they realized how long Im gone. I still have a few both men and women friends from that time period so long ago. They have their own lives and have been for years.

We are moving into Summer. Night work is not as bad. I recall during my ready mix days in August some years it's 130 in the shade and quite a bit more than that inside my particular truck in which the Razorback company has never been able to fix or replace the A/C in it. There has been a number of times I hose myself down with some of that cold water out of my drum tank to get cool, particularly when the cab temps approach 145 and my head starts to get really bad from the heat prior to passing out.

I could be a ##### and whine about the no air conditioning, but I kept my big mouth shut and hung in there. Usually here in Arkansas when it gets that hot it generates a pretty good storm with rain to cool things off pronto. It might destroy the foreman's dreams of finishing that footing he wants poured out of my truck due to lightning but we all will get cool. The rest gets dumped into the waste pond back at the shop. Wasted effort.

When it really gets bad we switch to night ops and wait until the sun goes down and then goes to work. Heat cures that ready mix concrete like seriously fast, before you reach the job site sometimes. So night ops isnt too bad. Not too hot either.

You are with a very large company that has a finger into essentially everything. I have learned myself that I can do night work, but it takes about 4 nights to adapt my body to night work. If the dispatch put me on days, I need 3 days off to flip my body and some companies will give me three days off at home strictly for the purpose to flip the body from nights to days again. They understand very well what it takes so we can be absolutely safe and working at our best.

The HOS situation in trucking has people flipping night and day OTR every other day. Ultimately it does destroy a person's body clock. Mine is gone. The sun is setting at this hour and Im just getting started all over again just like a vampire. It's nuts.

My computer has a app that regulates blue light coming from the monitor. At sunset it eliminates blue light and changes the entire colors range coming out of the monitor to a warmer set of colors that encourages my body to build melatonian for sleep tonight. When the computer updates in the night and does daily backup and maintaince while I sleep, the screen saver emits no blue light waking me up causing toss and turn.

The medicines I take are another problem. The pain medicines in particular. When I am tired at end of day and take the night time dose for sleep, the pain goes away and the automatic nervous system has a load of stress from pain taken off it. Guess what? I feel like 18 year old and wanna go out and dance all night long. That's not going to happen it's silly at my age. But that is one impact that I have to deal with. It's nice to have energy equal to 10 cups of coffee without the shaking and migraines after.

When you are not specifically on duty or driving, you need a little downtime to yourself. If you have certain special people in your life stay in contact with them. A word from home that is cheerful and encouraging does wonders for your morale. When you feel like all is well, then even bad days out there on the road is not too much trouble.

One night Dallas pwned me in really seriously aggressive traffic. I decided it was not worth it to push on to Oklahoma on the old 287. The people are just too mean and onery that night. So I pulled in the old 76 at Terrel in East Dallas (Now closed god only knows who owns it now...) and called my girlfriend in Arkansas. I spent a little time on the phone venting to her. And vice versa with her troubles at the Govt Job in the VA.

In about a hour we both were fine. I took dinner and hit the road the next morning with a new appt time in hand. Dispatch was not too happy, but when they found out that I could have hit a whole bunch of people they settled down and quit whining to get me the new appt time in Denver.

If you stick with your employer, other opportunities will come up. And what oppertunites.

If after say 6 months to a year and you are STILL not happy, then by all means find another employer. Give proper notice and why. Be nice. You would have gotten your dues in and the experience most companies demand. especially if you managed to stay even keel and strain and out of trouble.

Just one thing.

No matter how bad you feel, or angry you get or anything in between... never... never... ever march into your dispatch and roar at them. They absolutely do not wanna hear it. especially from you as they have a thousand times before you came along. DO get it out of your system by yelling at the trees. So your mind will be calm and you will find that you are safer behind the wheel of that 40 ton 18 wheeler and able to deal with the nickypickypicky crap that goes on every day. Or in your case night.

This too shall pass. Just remember that summers are really hot in the day time here in the south. Don't be in such a hurry to burn. Enjoy your nights.

 

Wow.