I used to keep a bottle of lotion that contained SPF in my car, killing two birds with one stone: moisturizing my perpetually dry hands and sun protection. Though I wear sunscreen, I always noticed when driving that my hands were exposed to the sun more than any other part of my body.
For women, sunscreen is preached like a Sunday sermon, because it increases signs of aging, and by God, if you’re 50, you better look 40. But men – who primarily make up the population of truck drivers – well … most of them don’t care. I know my husband sure doesn’t when he’s out on his fishing boat.
For truck drivers, it may just not be something they think about. They may think because they’re inside a vehicle, they’re protected. But that’s not the case.
There are two million skin cancer cases per year, half of which are people who commute for a living, and more than two people die of skin cancer every hour in the U.S., according to the Skin Cancer Foundation. Almost 53% of all skin cancers occur on the left side of the body – the side drivers expose to the sun the most during their hours of service, according to Pub Med.
It's called a trucker’s tan, where one arm is visibly darker than the other.
The Arizona Center for Skin Cancer Care reports that transportation truck drivers have higher rates of skin cancer. There’s a picture that the New England Journal of Medicine posted in 2012 of an unidentified 69-year-old man who had, at that time, been a trucker for 28 years. The left side of his face was visibly more wrinkled and droopier than the right.
But the sun is worse on a trucker’s arm than their face because no matter where the sun is, during the day the left arm is subjected to sun.
There are several options to help combat it.
Drivers could do like I did and wear sunscreen (which I still recommend for the face), but I was only in the car for 40 minutes round trip for my daily commute to work. A professional driver, who is on the road for hours and tasked with his safety and those around him, doesn’t need to be reapplying sunscreen throughout the day while driving down the road.
Then there are sun-blocking shirts, which still leave the hands exposed. Side note: these could be good swag gifts for Truck Driver Appreciation Week instead of basic T-shirts.
There are also sunshades – kind of like those you put on your back car door windows to protect babies – that can be installed on the truck. I found one on Amazon that’s a custom fit for a Freightliner Cascadia. I’m sure there are some out there for other makes and models, but for this particular one, the reviews aren’t great – only an overall three out of five stars – with one driver stating that the suction cups are “in line of sight while at an intersection” and another sharing that it does impact the ability to roll down the window.
And then there’s the Arm Rocker Sun Blocker from TruckersTan.com. A former truck driver developed the arm shield with safety in mind. It doesn’t obstruct the driver’s view out of the window nor the side mirror and has been tested with the device in place with the window fully down at 75 miles per hour.
The piece, which has a 400-degree melting point, is inserted into the window and comes up and over the driver’s left arm and hand, completely blocking the sun. Made for larger vehicles like vans and semi-trucks, the American-made product, cannot be used in a car because it would obstruct view.
It's a $50, potentially life-saving product.
Back to Truck Driver Appreciation Week, it could be a good prize to have in your arsenal, or for those companies that really need to improve driver satisfaction, maybe install them standard on every truck.
We all know driver health – mental and physical – isn’t the best. In CCJ’s 2024 What Drivers Want survey, drivers cited lack of appreciation/respect as a top factor affecting their mental health, which impacts physical health.
So this is something that could help with both. Show them your appreciation by caring about their health. Such a simple thing could go a long way for driver retention.
