Episode 094: Driver Health

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Welcome back for another episode of the Fleet Success Show. I'm your host, Josh Turley, joined by the full crew again, finally, right? I've got Steve on the phone. Steve, how you doing?

I'm doing great. It's great to be back.

I know, right? Then joined again also by Jeff Jenkins.

Hey, Steve, it is great to have you back.

Thank you.

Yeah, look forward to it. There's been a gap.

Just a small one though. Well, uh, so today we wanted to talk a little bit about, um, driver health, which, uh, you know, it's kind of come up in the news a little bit lately. You know, I know we've been talking about, uh, you know, ELD mandate was, was a big deal a couple years ago. Um, and a lot of that stemmed from, you know, making sure that our trucks and transportation were safe on the road. And as we talk about risk management in the industry, one of the biggest risks that you have, you know, it's not the vehicle itself, it's the nut you put behind the wheel, right? Right. And we used to always have a joke in the four-wheel drive community is, you know, I got four squirrels under the hood and a nut behind the wheel. And the idea is you gotta be careful about that nut, you know, that that doesn't come too loose. So—

In the fleet business, we call it a loose screw behind the wheel. So—

Yeah, a little loose screw.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, of course, you got Tesla steering wheels falling off and things like that, right? So there might be some legit loose screws in the steering wheel, but in this case, we are talking about the drivers and some of the things that you can do to kind of help be aware of the risk that you have with your drivers, specifically driver health, right? And how, you know, making sure that we have Healthy drivers, healthy employees can affect the overall, you know, risk position of the business. So you guys have, you know, you've been around trucking, you've been around city fleets, you know, like, what do you guys see as some of the challenges that drivers face just in living a more healthy lifestyle, right? Like, you know, because there's— you got technicians, we're fairly active, we're constantly moving around through the shop. You know, if we're admin staff, like, you know, we have opportunities, we can get up, we can walk around, we can do things. But when you talk about the specific issues that drivers face, you know, because of their job and operating environment, what are some of the things that you guys see as being challenges for, let's say, like an over-the-road trucking company?

Yeah.

Well, so I like to think of it this way, right? So think you're on a road trip yourself and you're going somewhere like say 5 hours away. Well, what do you do when you stop to either get gas or use the restroom? You get a soda, you get fast food, right? You get your snacks that you're eating. Now think about that in the context of someone who's 14 hours a day in a truck driving, and they may not even go home. So you extend that like for several, several days that they're in a truck. So it's not a very health conducive environment to be in. So you're sitting, right? The driver's driving 11 hours a day, working 14 hours a day, 11 hours on your butt behind the wheel. You are probably eating fast food. You only get out to use the restroom, to fuel up. And a lot of those guys, when they do that, they don't do anything but get out of their truck, fuel, walk, use the restroom, take a shower, eat, come back and do— get back behind the wheel and go. When they're done for the day, they crawl in the cab, they go to sleep, right? So it's, there's not a lot of activity when you're an over-the-road truck driver to help you get your body moving to stay healthy. And outside of that, like some of these guys, they get home once a week for a couple days. When, when you go home, you typically don't wanna spend several hours while you're at home meal prepping and making food for the week. Well, in that instance, you either have to have a refrigerator in your truck, which a lot of 'em do have nowadays, or you have to have your igloo ice chest, which you're gonna have to keep cool all the time, right? There may be not enough room, you may not have prep area, you know, so just the whole environment in general, like it's not conducive for healthiness overall.

You know, you talk about office people, truck drivers are the ultimate sedentary lifestyle, you know, I mean, they really sit a lot, eat the worst food. I mean, if you've ever been to a truck stop, You know, they usually have a Wendy's or a Chester's Chicken or, you know, something that's greasy and unhealthy. And, you know, they aren't the most conducive. And if you— unless you have a lot of discipline.

Wendy's isn't a healthy food option.

They do have some good food options, but you have to be disciplined. I think that's kind of what Jeffy was saying. You know, you got to really be disciplined when you're a truck driver. If you're trying to stay healthy.

Yep.

Well, so, you know, as you're going through that, then, um, what are some ways that, that we can kind of help, you know, in the over the road setting, you know, that you can help mitigate some of those, those health factors?

Well, one of the things, you know, when I was teaching the DOT class of the NAFA group here a while back, one of the things was, uh, driver fitness. And they had all kinds of suggestions, like, you know, you see those, um, those, those cables that you can hook to your truck, you know, and you can do, you know, things like that. Or you could literally, while you're at the truck stop, you could go, like Jeff said, just go for a walk. You know, it's all about typically calories in versus calories out, you know. And so that's one thing you could do is, you know, track your calories and, and just stay, you know, disciplined on, on doing things that are conducive to health.

Yeah. If you're doing, you know, you're sitting in the truck for 14 hours or whatever, you know, just finding a way to increase your physical activity while you're sitting there. Right. And obviously you don't want to be like distracted. You're sitting there trying to do a workout with, you know, rubber band resistance bands while you're driving the truck. Probably not a good idea. Right. So maybe not that, but I think one of the things I love is in like in the F-150 or the F-350, you know, the Super Duty, the Platinum. Right, is they have like the massaging seats. A lot of people don't know is that you, you know, when you sit for long periods of time, you're at risk for blood clots. You know, it actually happens quite a bit in airplanes. And so one of the things that you can do is like you, you know, like you put a little bit of tension in your legs and you could do some like workouts, you know, just by shifting your weight a little bit and kind of just tightening the muscles. You know, just putting a little bit of weight, like if you're sitting still right now, like sitting in an office listening to this, just try it. Just try putting a little bit of weight like on your left leg that's on the ground, right? And try to lift, just lift your seat up a little bit and then switch to the right leg and then to the left leg, right? So there's like these just little exercises you can do and it helps with the blood clots because, uh, like when you're in the airplane for a long period of time, you're actually at risk of pulmonary embolism. A lot of people don't realize that is that a blood clot will form in your leg and then it'll drift up to your lungs and then you'll suffocate right there.

I actually have a kind of an exercise. It's a vibrating thing that I stand on that actually shakes your legs, and it's really good for things like exactly what you're saying, Josh. It's a— it's— I mean, it even gets rid of varicose veins on women and everything because it really just increases your circulation in your legs because it actually forces your legs, you know, to almost exercise to some degree.

Well, that's what I like about the, like the Fords. They've got the massagers built into the truck seats. Right. And the, and part of that is to help mitigate some of the risk of sitting there in, in the truck for such a long time. You know, and getting uncomfortable and getting stiff. Well, that's your body's sign that it needs to move. Right. That it's had too much pressure on that spot for too long and it needs to shift a little bit.

Right.

Because it's at risk of forming blood clots. And so seat massagers can help with that. I don't know that they're putting those in over-the-road trucks like Kenworths and whatnot.

No, I don't think so. But you know, you can get a portable one that you can put on your seat because they do have inverters inside those. So you could actually plug them in and you could have a back massager or a butt massager that you can just lay over your seat that can work that. So it's just an idea, not comfortable probably to sit on for long periods of time, but just if you alternate it, like when you go and you know, just need a brief 20-30 minutes, throw it on there, get that massage, get your blood flowing a little bit, then back off. But I don't know if people remember, like my age you do, but the movie Over the Top where Sylvester Stallone, he was an arm wrestling competitor and he drove a truck for a living, a day cab, right? And he slept in that day cab, which is uncomfortable as all get out. But anyway, he would get up every morning in the movie and he would do push-ups outside, or he would have like 20-pound weight dumbbells that he would get. He'd just go through and he'd do about a half hour, 45-minute workout before he'd start his day. He'd also rigged like a tricep, like, pulley in his truck to where he would pull down and just like do these workouts. And, you know, obviously if he's an arm wrestling competitor, that helped him with his forearms and just, um, you know, keeping his arms strong. But the main thing about when you're over the road and you want to stay healthy is you have to be disciplined and dedicated to actually be that way, right? And that's no different than any other profession or anything, anything else. Like, if you, if you are at risk of being unhealthy, you have to make the effort to actually go and do something, even if it's something as simple is going for a lot— for a longer walk, right? Walk around a truck stop a couple times. A lot of truck stops now that they're building, they actually have like, um, like dog parks or, or they're bigger areas. So you actually can go and take some laps and do some laps, you know, so that you're getting your blood circulating, so that you're working out your muscles, so that you're not just having that sedentary lifestyle over and over again. But you've got to be willing to go out and do it. Like, you can't just expect that a walk to and from a truck stop to take a shower, to eat something is going to actually help you stay healthy.

Right. Maybe if you're at risk of, of being that driver, right? You look at, is over the road the right, you know, occupation for me? Or should I look at something else? Like maybe I'm driving, you know, trucks for like a Coca-Cola or, you know, food and beverage distributor. We actually have to get out and help, you know, unload the freight. And, you know, like you have, like there's some serious physical activity that goes on. In moving drinks and cases of drinks that way to kind of help spice up the day a little bit.

Yep.

One of the things that they're subject to a lot, obviously, if you get, if you get over a mass body index of 35 and you become obese, then what ends up happening is, you know, you have issues with diabetes, heart disease, you know, things like that, high blood pressure. All those things come when you get in that condition. So I mean, it's, it's not only something you should be disciplined to do, but I mean, you got to think about it. I mean, it's something I certainly think about as I'm getting older myself and I'm not even driving a truck. The other thing to think about is we didn't talk much about the other CDL, but like a bus driver is the same thing. School bus drivers, transit bus drivers, they have a very sedentary lifestyle. They've got to do the same thing as a truck driver over the road, right? They've got to build something in. The good thing about them, of course, they're easily home. And they can go to a gym at night or something. But you still, while you're on the road, you still gotta be disciplined to stay away from the unhealthy foods and snacks and things like that that kind of add to your problem.

Yeah. You know what's funny is like when I, so I remember like when I first started dispatching and trucking, you know, we were going through and recruiting drivers and you would be shocked at how many, and back then it wasn't as many drop and hook operations, right? There was Driver Unload. It was a lot more well known back then. Like, and it was a lot of just like pallet jacking something out of a trailer. But you would have guys that would adamantly refuse to do any load that they actually had to touch. Like, they did everything they could to prevent any physical activity. Now, there, there can be an argument made that we didn't pay enough, right, for them to do that. And that was like, oh, I'm not gonna do that for $25, it's just not worth my time, right? But the health benefits of load, of actually doing something active, to me would outweigh that in a lot of instances. That's just me. Like, I'm an active person, right? I've got a different mindset, I think, than a lot of other people. But very actively are refusing to do certain loads because they had to do any physical activity. And that definitely doesn't help you as well.

Right? Like, there's got to be a desire, you know, like you have to want to have a healthy— because it's too easy and too cheap. And I think this is true for any, any profession, is it— you look at like the things like the value meal at McDonald's, right? Like, what's the cheapest option on there? It's usually one of the most unhealthiest options. You know, like you're talking about, like the McDouble and a large fry. Well, you can get them both for just a little over a buck. You want to know what's expensive? The $15 salad, right? It's, it's very natural and easy for you to kind of have this unhealthy lifestyle. You have to make it an effort. You've got to have desire to, to have that healthier lifestyle because it's, you know, and it also, we have human biology working against us, right? Our biology is geared to desire things with salt, fat, and sugar, right? Like, those are the three essential— you throw enough salt, fat, and sugar in anything and it's going to light up the dopamine receptors in our brains and we're just going to want more of it, right? So we end up becoming addicts, food addicts, um, because it's just like processed food has a ton of that type of material in it, um, you know, it just, it makes it, you know, like you get a ton of calories out of it, it's short, you know, there's a lot of calorie density But then you're sitting for 14 hours and you don't need all the calories. And so, like, you have to have this desire to kind of overcome it, break the chain. And, you know, James Clear talks about this in Atomic Habits, his habit stack against, you know, the biology of your system to kind of make it more counterintuitive and make it less, less desirable, you know, to go out there and get the McDouble versus, you know, a chicken sandwich or something like that that's a little bit more healthy.

You know, I actually, I was gonna say, remember that show a while back called Upsize Me or whatever it was?

Super Size Me.

Super Size Me. I actually ate at McDonald's for a whole year and lost weight. You can actually lose weight if you track your calories. You know, now I didn't upsize or in Super Size Me, but I mean, some of that food, I mean, don't eat the bun, you know, do things like that to, you know, to eat a little bit more healthy. But, um, if you just plan your day, plan your how many calories you're gonna have, things like that, it's pretty amazing. I mean, I told, I talked about this earlier in the podcast. It's all about calories in versus calories out. It is really very scientific if you think about it, you know, if you're trying to, to stay healthy.

Well, and I think the biggest, one of the biggest changes you can make just from a healthy lifestyle, um, you know, Jeff, you mentioned you know, Sylvester Stallone working out for 30 minutes before, you know, his drive is just going on that 30-minute walk and then drinking more water. You know, I think as a, as a society, we, you know, we just do not drink enough water. Others, but they said something like you're supposed to drink an ounce for every pound of body weight you have, right? And I've noticed a difference just flipping over to like making sure that I've done at least 64 ounces a day. And there's a huge difference, you know, A, in kidney health, in overall, you know, like mental stamina and mental awareness. You don't get like that brain fog in the afternoon if you're not drinking those sugary drinks or drinking coffee or something like that. It's really incredible the amount of, you know, purification that just drinking water does for your body and for the cells at a biological level.

Yeah. And although—

although at my age you have to be careful because you don't sleep then.

You're at the bathroom every 10 minutes, are you saying, Steve?

Yeah, every couple hours.

Yeah. Well, here's the other thing too.

In a diaper, depends.

That would be easier.

You know, most places also have water fountains, right? So you think about what you're spending on soda as they're going, right? So you want to talk about a cost-saving method too. You know, if you just take bottles, right, or you've got your stainless steel bottle, whatever, and people, you know, sometimes make the argument, well, I just don't crave water, just doesn't taste very good.

Guess what?

They have like calorie-free Mio water mixers or Crystal Light or whatever it is that you can also dump in there to reduce the calories but still work on getting that water intake.

Right. Well, and I've seen that too, is as you eat less salt, you crave less salt. And so a lot of people, when they make a switch to like a healthier lifestyle, it's like, oh, the food just doesn't taste as good. But as they commit to it and they stay focused on it, what ends up happening is their tastes actually change. This is something they did the study, and I think I was watching Forks Over Knives, and they talked a lot about that, you know, was that, you know, we put so much salt in our food, but if we just decrease the amount of salt, like, over time, you get to the point that you taste regular food again. You're like, oh my gosh, it's like sucking on a salt stick, right? You know, like, you just, you don't want to do it. And so it just makes it easier. And same thing's true for, you know, for anything, like, you know, you get through that initial surge of resistance that your body's putting up, uh, you know, you start drinking more water and things like that. And then flipping back, you realize, oh man, like, I actually crave water now. And, you know, like, I look forward to that experience because your body retrains itself and retrains the dopamine receptors around those types of foods rather than what you were eating before.

I've actually got on health kicks. I've noticed that you usually crave what you last ate. You know, so if you really want to, if you start eating healthy, you'll start craving that kind of food rather than, you know, some bad foods for you. So it takes 30 days to basically get that out of your system, you know, if you want to, if you want to start doing that. So, and it's, you know, it's a painful 30 days because you're going to go through a lot of cravings if you're eating the wrong foods.

Like a detox, right? You know, you're coming back. Well, I mean, sugar, they say, is as bad as cocaine, right, on I just need to go, you know, sweat it out in the jail cell and, uh, and life will be good, right?

There you go.

Well, so what are some of the other motivations, right? You know, people tell us to be healthy all the time. It doesn't happen, you know. But like, as a truck driver, uh, what are some other things that I need to be aware of? Like, hey, have to be a little bit more health conscious than, say, somebody just working at a desk. Yeah, I know there's, there's probably requirements around a CDL and getting that, you know, like what are some of those things that, that they need to be aware of?

Yeah, you, you've got, so you've gotta pass a physical to get a CDL. Like that's part of being a truck driver. You actually have to go through that. Not only do you have to do that for your CDL, every major trucking company, probably most trucking companies require you to do their own physical when you go and, and you hire on for them as well because they want to mitigate their risk as well when it comes to you getting injured. You know, but like for your DOT physical, like you've got to have your vision and your hearing, and you know, you got to do a blood pressure test and you've got to do a movement exam to make sure that you're able to do the job. And you know, a sleep test, the big— one of the biggest things that guys fail on is the sleep test. Like they have sleep apnea, they need a CPAP machine because they're not able to get a good night's rest, you know, in a truck. I would venture to say probably about 30% of all the guys we would bring through to orientation, they would be sleep deficient and they would be sent in for some type of a sleep study. And, you know, you think about it, it's even harder in a truck to sleep. You're in a confined space. You're usually somewhere public when you're going to bed at night, right? You're on the side of a highway, you're pulled over into a rest stop, you're in a truck stop where there's constant noise and movement going on as you're trying to get sleep. And so that really prevents guys from being able to get a good night's sleep. Um, you know, as far as the, the physical part of it, you've got to lift a certain amount of weight. You got to be able to do a squat. You got to be able to step up onto stairs or some type of a box. Like, as this is your profession, it is actually incumbent on you to live a semi-healthy lifestyle just so you can keep your CDL and you can keep, you know, that income that you, that you need to provide for your family with.

Especially if you've made driving trucks your career, right?

Yeah.

Pivot off of that into something else, uh, suddenly you can't renew your CDL.

And they have to be done every 2 years, so you've got to go through it. So that's good enough, that's a good incentive to keep, keep fit, right? Um, I have a grandson that has a high BMI and They're making him take a sleep apnea test to renew his CDL. So I mean, they're, they stay up on it. I mean, driver fatigue is serious. You don't get quiet, quite enough sleep. It's worse than actually drunk driving or driving on controlled substances when you start to weave all over the road.

So, yeah, think about that. So you think about how often like you're driving and you see a truck that starts to swerve from one side or the other side. And usually a lot of it happens at like at dusk or at dawn, right? When that sun is either rising or it's setting, you know, it's is like a very relaxing type environment. It's not too bright, it's not too dark.

No, you see that kicking in. Yep.

Yeah. And you, and you see those guys, and like, I wonder a lot of times when I see that, like, how— man, is that guy need a break? What's going on, right? Like, do I need to call his dispatcher and say, hey, this guy's weaving a little bit, you need to probably reach out to him and make sure he's okay. But yeah, fatigue is a huge deal. And if you think about like when you put junk into your body, like, that just increases the fatigue. Like, you know how you feel after you eat some like vegetables or fruit versus after you eat a burger, right? You want to— your body kind of like starts to process all that fat and all that food, and so it's working overtime doing that, which like takes away from, you know, your alertness because your body's focusing other places, right?

Well, and as a truck driver, you have like just an exponential responsibility to maintain your alertness, right? Because of the load you're carrying, because of the, the amount of damage you can do when you go off the rails versus, you know, a drowsy driver, uh, that's, you know, got a pa— a car full of vehicle, you know, a car full of passengers or something like that.

You got an 80,000-pound missile if you're loaded up to, you know, the full weight. 80,000 pounds. Yep. That can do some damage.

Yeah. And there's, and there's really nothing stopping, you know, like I've, we've seen the videos, right? Where, yeah, where a truck driver just doesn't even hit the brakes. And, and runs into, you know, a traffic stop essentially. Um, and it's, yeah, it's not just a simple rear-end accident at that point. You know, we saw one just here on I-10, you know, what, a week ago, two weeks ago. It seems like there's a fatality in the news, you know, pretty often. And almost every time you hear that there's a fatality, what's involved? It's a truck.

Yep, truck.

It's a truck. I mean, I've driven from Phoenix to Salt Lake and back several times, and you always You know, on 1 out of, you know, 5 trips, you'll see a truck off the side of the road somewhere that's gone out into the ravine, you know, where somebody's, you know, fell— fallen asleep, or I guess talked on the cell phone they shouldn't have been talking on, or whatever distracted them. But typically it's fatigue. Guy dozes off, goes off the side of the road. You know, it's a huge thing. It's why the DOT requires so many hours that you can drive. You want to make sure you're fully, fully rested.

Yep.

The hours of service.

Doctoring your logs or anything so that you were sticking to that mandate. And, you know, like we've talked in the past about the dangers of having drivers under the influence, you know, but as Steve said, like, it's just as bad being fatigued and it deserves just as much attention, you know. So the same things that we said back then is, hey, like, you should be checking in with your drivers before they go out on the road. You know, and getting a little bit of face time if you can, or, you know, looking them in the eye and realizing, like, dude, something's not quite right with this guy. You can see the same thing when somebody is just fatigued or, you know, just isn't quite, you know, they're tired, right? And I wouldn't be surprised, you know, I don't know it'll ever happen just because of our privacy laws, but, you know, we all have these watches and smart Fitbits and all that stuff. They'll actually track your sleep. It'd be really interesting to me to see, you know, if it goes another step further, which is maybe there's a pay bump or some kind of compensation or something to award drivers who do get a full 8 hours of sleep or a full 6 hours of sleep, depending on which scientist you listen to at what time of day.

That's an interesting concept. I actually bought a new watch that tracks my oxygen level, my blood pressure. My heartbeat, you know. So I mean, this technology is out there, you know, and things that are amazingly accurate. It's actually amazingly accurate.

Yeah, it does a really good job on it. There's companies that out there that give, uh, like rewards and incentives to people to go sign up for a gym membership or who lose weight or something like that. And so I wouldn't be surprised if you start seeing that where trucking companies are like, hey, if you wear this watch, it's kind of like we're putting the ODB-II sensor in the vehicle to tractor, like hard braking and all that. Now we're looking at your body and, you know, are you taking care of yourself just like we're taking care of our equipment? Because we're putting you in charge of this equipment, right? And we want to make sure that you're healthy enough to operate it safely.

Yeah.

Interesting. Yeah. Like a lot of, a lot of trucking terminals, especially for the major companies, they've actually added gyms to them, right? And they have sleep rooms. They have both those things so that you can either get a workout or you can get a good sleep while your truck's getting worked on, or if you're not close to a terminal that you need a break. But some of them also will like reimburse membership, right? And you can go to like an Anytime Fitness or a Planet Fitness, like they're all over the place. And so you should be able to— yeah, you should be able to find one somewhere along your route if you're going like one of those two gyms, you know. And companies do incentivize, saying, hey, like, you know, we'll pay for your membership if you're actually gonna go, you know. Now sometimes they'll require a printout for that reimbursement or whatever the case may be, but like it's incumbent on them to make sure that those guys are healthy. Because if they're healthy, they're safe.

Yep. Yep. Absolutely.

Well, cool. Well, I think, uh, that's gonna wrap it up for us on this episode. Uh, if you guys have any comments, I'd love to hear your questions. Uh, send them over to us at podcast@rtafleet.com. Uh, we've got the Fleet Success Summit coming up here pretty shortly. Uh, would love to see you guys out here in March, uh, up in Las Vegas. You can go to fleetsuccesssummit.com. We've got 12 amazing speakers of which, you know, you'll hear from Steve and Jeff. We've had Mark Canton on the podcast before. You'll hear from him. We've got just some amazing industry experts and some non-industry people that you've probably never heard from before, but just there to give you a different perspective on the challenges that we face in the fleet industry. I would love to see you guys out there for that. Again, you can go to fleetsuccesssummit.com. And until next time, stay healthy.

I am stoked. I'm going to be healthy now.

Thanks, Steve. Later, guys.

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