All Wound Up: Driver Stress

Until recently, it never occurred to me that commercial truck driving had become such a high-stress profession.

But recently, I attended a management seminar on the topic and my eyes were opened. Without a doubt, all of the changes and growth in our industry — consolidation and withdrawals from the industry, the lack of infrastructure and growing population density, border crossings — have made driving a very stressful occupation.

The seminar was presented by A.J. Bullivant at the Hamilton Transportation Club, and the more I heard about how to spot stress, the more I thought that trucking fleets should be taking this health risk very seriously.

What does a stressful workplace lead to, among other things, Bullivant says, “high blood pressure, insomnia, back problems, anger, and fatigue.” And what makes the work stressful? Again, in the words of the seminar leader: “unpleasant working conditions such as high noise levels, poor lighting, various temperature extremes, limited opportunity to socialize, and excessive work hours.”

Sound like trucking to you? Does to me.

The poor health resulting from prolonged stress can end driving careers prematurely. This is unacceptable in an industry that’s already losing far too many professional drivers to early retirement.

Other symptoms include low productivity, frustration, lack of concentration, depression, or even panic attacks. Do you want your people prone to those problems behind your wheels?

We dispatch drivers with set-in-stone time commitments. Drivers operate in the bubble of their cabs with minimal social interaction. Major life events that are family- or home-related can wreak havoc on a driver’s mind — a problem that’s compounded by a driver with a ton of time alone in a cab to dwell on things. If you cut somebody off from major life events such as family activities, you’re just asking for stress-borne trouble.

What’s more, day-in and day-out, drivers are required to keep up with increasingly complex and ever-changing rules, regulations, and procedures.

“Stress may occur through an inability to cope with the technical or intellectual demands of a particular task,” Bullivant told the crowd.

Crossing a border is very stressful, as are DOT roadside inspections, safety blitzes, and heightened border security levels. When our industry has — let’s face facts — quite a few people with poor communication skills, how are they expected to function?

Whenever Bullivant discussed stress-causing factors — unpleasant noise or plain, old-fashioned dirty working conditions, I thought “drivers.”

As an industry, we must take note of the stress. It’s affecting our drivers for sure, but also, your businesses. This is not an admission of weakness or an inability to cope. It’s an honest admission of a blatantly obvious but oft-overlooked problem in this industry.

So what are we going to do about it?

We can ill afford to lose quality drivers prematurely but we have not tackled the subject of handling stress in a meaningful way to protect the current driver pool.

Outside of Bullivant’s seminar, very little has been devoted to tackle stress in the trucking industry. Apart from the Transportation Health & Safety Association of Ontario’s “Road Rage” training seminar, I can find very little on the subject for professional drivers.

We need to take a closer look at the effects of stress in our line of work, and then find ways to deal with it.

Let’s re-think our drivers’ working environment and their responsibilities and then focus some much-needed resources to develop stress management training and tools to help our drivers deal with this very real issue. We don’t have much choice, when you think about it. And not having choice causes stress too. And who needs that?

Want to hear it right from the consultant’s mouth? Contact Bullivant & Associates Inc., Stoney Creek, Ont. www.bullivant.ca or call toll-free 1-888-712-7197.


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