Editor's note: The following is the second of a three-part series on truck driver wellness. The series is based largely on a survey CCJ conducted earlier this year of company drivers and leased owner-operators. The first part in this special report focuses on stress. The third part looks at physical health.
Dean Croke was chatting at a truck show recently with a truck driver who had a walking stick and an aged face. Croke, principal analyst at DAT Freight and Analytics and himself a former truck driver, said he thought the man must be 80 years old just by looking at him. Turns out, the man was a year younger than Croke’s 65.
“I've always said that truckers look about 10 years older than they are … There have been studies done that show the life expectancy of truckers is far less than most people,” Croke said. Industry stats show the average lifespan of a long haul truck driver is 61 years, while the average lifespan of an American male is 76 years. “Of course, that's what a life of trucking does to you. It'll grind you down mentally and physically.”
Only 4% of the nearly 600 drivers surveyed in CCJ’s 2024 What Drivers Want study ranked mental health as a top concern. But trucking and mental health experts, as well as drivers’ comments and their stress-related illnesses conveyed in the survey, show that while they may not be concerned about their mental health, it has a bigger impact than they realize.
According to the survey, which was conducted in partnership with video safety and video telematics provider Lytx, mental health paled in comparison to physical health, which 19% ranked a top concern. But other concerns drivers ranked higher – paying their bills (29%), saving for retirement (15%), and home time and family life (10%) – have a significant effect on mental health.
“All these other factors drivers list as top priorities like pay and home time, for example, also play a role in their mental health, especially now with how the economy has been,” said Jennifer Gabel, founder of Construct Your Health. “Everybody talks about the grocery prices, but it's indicative of a bigger thing. What people are being paid, even if it looks like a lot, the cost of living everywhere has gotten so high that people have to keep some debt in order to live some semblance of what was typically the standard middle-class life, like being able to afford a home and two cars.”
In fact, all the choices listed in the CCJ survey – digging out of bankruptcy, health of a family member, paying for a child’s education, caring for elderly parents, finding a new driving job, safety on and off the job, and dealing with stress, anger and loneliness – impact mental health.
And the things they dislike most about their jobs as drivers, like regulations, a strained family life, lack of appreciation/respect and complexity of using new technology, also are factors affecting mental health.
When asked about things they dislike most about their jobs, the majority of drivers surveyed (35%), said “Regulations make it harder to work and make a living.”
"All the stupid regs would make anyone stressed out,” said company driver Keith DuBois, who operates out of Missouri.
Regulations were followed by 22% of drivers that said “It’s a thankless job – nobody respects truckers or appreciates what we do.”
“It’s a combination of factors. Self-worth is a big part of it,” Croke said. “A lot of guys feel like they're under-appreciated, which they are.”
Nearly two-thirds (65%) of respondents to our survey cited a lack of respect for drivers, the job they do and failure to treat them as part of the team as a reason fleets have a hard time keeping drivers. It was the second leading cause of driver turnover, behind only low pay (69%).
Forty-two-year-old driver Eric Lawson commented on lack of respect and appreciation for drivers. The leased owner operator ranked his mental health as a top concern as well as dealing with stress, anger and loneliness. According to his response to the survey, he has depression and insomnia.
The sleep factor
Gabel said sleep impacts mental health, and Croke said all these other factors are exacerbated by lack of quality sleep.
“The driving part is easy. Steering a truck is easy. It's everything else that goes on, and absent good quality sleep, it's a really hard industry,” Croke said. “I'm convinced, having been through it, studied it, suffered from it, at the heart of it is lack of good quality sleep for truckers … because absent that, they don't have any coping skills.”
At the heart of it, he said, is the crazy schedules.
Company driver Steve Karandy, 59, suffers from two stress-related illnesses: obesity and hypertension. While nearly half (44%) of survey respondents said they don’t suffer from any stress-related illnesses, 42% said they suffer from high blood pressure, and 22% suffer from obesity.
Karandy said his hypertension and obesity “could also be related to a terrible work schedule.”
Croke said a driver’s hours are “ludicrous.” The typical model for large truckload carriers is one day home for every seven out with 14-hour days ahead of a 10-hour break for a long-haul trucker. But the driver is over the road for up to a month before getting that time off. Sleep deprivation or lack of quality sleep also affects local drivers, too, who work at least 12 hours a day, he added.
That wears on a driver mentally over time, he said.
“A workday in trucking is 70% longer than the workday of the regulators that set the hours of service in place and ask you to be safe,” Croke said. “When we went away from paper logs, we lost the ability to sleep when we were tired.”
He said if you don’t have the same start time, you don’t have the same sleep pattern, and that leads to stress. It’s hard to sleep during the day when your 10-hour break starts at 9 a.m., he said.
Croke advocates for schedules built around a driver’s sleep pattern.
“Lock in the sleep block first, because without that, it's like a cordless drill that never gets charged fully. You just can't function,” he said. “I've learned that from experience, and I've implemented biocompatible scheduling at a number of fleets, and it's highly successful.”
He said the current system is backward. Carriers call the shipper, and the shipper hands out appointment times rather than the carrier telling the shipper what appointment time their driver can take based on their sleep pattern. There’s technology that can automate that for carriers.
“That's really what gets to a lot of mental health issues. Not only do you have way too much windscreen time to think about things, but if you lack good quality sleep, you just don't have the mental faculties to cope with it,” Croke said.
Mental affects physical
Croke said those schedules keep drivers isolated. Not only are they away from their own bed at home, they’re away from their family, looking out over the open road through a “windscreen," and all that on-road time helps lead the transportation industry to one of the highest divorce rates in the country: 40.5%, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The highway has always been a lonely place for drivers, but things have gotten exponentially worse since the invention of the smartphone and have multiplied since the pandemic.
Gabel said before smartphones, if you went into a doctor’s office, you had a choice between looking at years old magazines or talking to the person sitting next to you. Community has changed, she said, and it too has affected drivers, who once sat around at truck stops chatting with fellow drivers. Today’s truck stops – at least the chains – are designed to get in and get out, and smartphones make it easy to disengage from society.
"Where did the camaraderie go," asked Karandy.
Croke said drivers may see a lot of people, but they’re on their own all the time.
“It's even worse if you have to spend a 10-hour break on your own in a sleeper cab. It gets exponentially worse when you've got to spend a 34-hour reset in a crappy truck stop burning through cash nowhere near home, and you sit there in the truck on your own,” he said. “What you get is this massive expanse of time where you just sit there and stew on things, and that adds to the mental health problems that we've got.”
According to Occupational Safety and Health Administration, for every $1 spent on ordinary mental health concerns, employers see a $4 return in productivity gains.
Nearly three-quarters (74%) of our survey respondents said they would know would you know how to find help for mental health and wellness should they look for it, with 20% saying their carrier was a resource and 54% claiming they have the means but not through their employer. Another 18% said they would have to scour the Internet for information while 8% said they had no idea how to find help.
Gabel said a lot of people, no matter who they are, are afraid to be alone with their thoughts, so they search for distractions. It could be healthy things like listening to music, a podcast or an audio book, or it could be toxic things like substance abuse.
Many, she said, reach for the socially acceptable addiction: food.
“It's hard to be mentally healthy unless you're also physically healthy and vice versa,” Gabel said. “I think by addressing mental health, we're also in a way addressing physical health because I think when you can have community and camaraderie, you aren't necessarily going to sit in the cab of your truck and eat from the vending machine at the truck stop.”
Gabel, a certified health coach and founder of a health and wellness company, believes healthy employees are more productive, efficient and safe. Her father was once a truck driver, and now she coaches construction workers and drivers at trucking companies in physical and mental health.
She said studies show that people metabolize food differently – and for the better – when in company versus alone.
Colorado-based company driver Charles Bolin said he he suffers from depression and commented that he can barely afford to eat on the road, which oftentimes results in poorer, cheaper food options. He also commented that when home time is available, he can’t afford to take and has therefore missed his daughter’s birthday the past two years.
Gabel said many drivers get into trucking because it promises good money without a four-year college degree, but they don’t take into account the fact that they may not get to see their kid play baseball or that their wife might divorce them because they’re gone all the time.
And that leads to accidents, Croke said.
Croke, previously vice president at Omnitracs Analytics, said Omnitracs built predictive models for large truckload carriers that determined which behaviors led to a crash.
“What we found was that when you go and talk to a driver who's predicted to have an accident, almost always the problem is at home,” he said. “That's where you get the distraction in the cab because the driver is on the phone talking to his spouse, or the kids are acting out because dad's not home.”
But drivers are required to be safe while working long days for weeks at a time with poor quality sleep.
“Talk about a dichotomy,” Croke said. “Those don't go together.”
