The life of an over-the-road (OTR) truck driver can be a rewarding and adventurous career but also a lonely and stressful one. Spending long hours on the open road can take a toll on a person’s mental and physical well-being, making it essential to find ways to enhance the overall experience. Whether you’re a seasoned OTR trucker or just starting your journey, incorporating small changes into your daily routine can make a big difference in your quality of life on the road. In this article, we’ll share ten tips for a more enjoyable OTR trucking experience to help you stay healthy, happy and reduce stress while driving OTR.
1. Take Time To Explore
One of the biggest ways to improve your trucking experience is to get out of the truck and explore your surroundings. As a truck driver, you travel the country and can use this to your advantage. Taking a 34 on the road can be an excellent opportunity to grab a cab into town and explore a city you would not have otherwise visited.
Check out the local parks, go mini golfing, fish, or visit a museum. Whatever tickles your fancy.
Even some of the rest areas around the country offer some beautiful views. There is one on I64 in West Virginia that comes to mind. It looks pretty normal and dull from the parking lot, but walk to the edge of the lot, and there is a right pretty river down at the bottom of the hill that was worth walking a couple of hundred feet to see and enjoy. If you’re running out west on I-90, pull into just about any of the rest areas in Montana, and you will find postcard-worthy views.
As an OTR truck driver, you’ll work a lot, but you will also have the occasional run where you have some extra time. If you use that spare time to explore your surroundings, you will have a more fulfilling and enjoyable experience as an OTR truck driver. I genuinely think that this was the best part of the job and lifestyle. Not many jobs allow you to experience so many different, interesting, or enjoyable things without costing you an arm and a leg.
2. Eat Good Food
As an OTR Truck driver, you will eat out of truck stops. That’s a fact, but you don’t have to limit yourself to that.
You can cook good healthy meals right in your truck with a little effort. I had a countertop oven, an instant pot, a microwave, and an electric skillet, and I could make any meal I would have cooked at home right in my truck. Taco’s, pizza, ribeyes, biscuits and gravy, baked potatoes, you name it. I cooked it in the truck. Doing this not only helped me to eat a little bit healthier but also saved me a ton of money.
If you’re driving OTR, you also get a chance to enjoy regional specialties. When you are in the South, find yourself some proper fried chicken. In New York, grab some pizza. And let’s not forget about Texas BBQ and Louisiana crawfish.
While ham sandwiches, fast food, and roller dogs have their place, you don’t have to limit yourself to them.
3. Get Enough Rest
OTR truck drivers work a ton of hours and often have an erratic schedule. This can make getting enough rest challenging at times. To enjoy your life on the road, you must be well-rested. Being exhausted is not only miserable but also a safety issue when you are under the controls of an eighty-thousand-pound battering ram rolling down the interstate.
This means you need to prioritize getting enough rest. Avoid spending six hours of your break playing on your phone if you have to be rolling in ten hours. Additionally, if you’re already starting to feel worn out and they sent you a run with a tight schedule, consider refusing it or adjusting the pickup and delivery times if that’s an option at your company so you can catch up a little bit on your rest.
If you are well-rested, you will be happier, healthier, safer, and less stressed on the road.
4. Take Home Time
The longer you stay out, the more money you make as an OTR truck driver. While that is a fact, you must also have a life outside the truck. Take home time when needed to stay connected with friends and family. You are out on the road working hard to make a living but don’t neglect the living part of that equation.
I learned this firsthand when covid hit. I had stayed out for a few months before the lockdowns happened to stack away cash for an expensive overseas vacation I planned to take that year. When the lockdowns and travel restrictions happened, that all changed. Those vacation plans were canceled, and in addition, because I have family members who had heightened risk factors, I didn’t want to risk exposing them either.
The result was I ended up staying out well over a year without going home for a visit at a time when activities outside of the truck were also severely limited. Being cooped up in the truck for so long did no favors for my mental health or happiness. I was much more cranky and irritable and generally unhappy with the person I was becoming.
Those unprecedented circumstances will hopefully never happen again, but it illustrates the point. You need to take time off away from the truck occasionally if you want to enjoy life as an OTR truck driver. Go see your family and friends, or take a vacation. Whatever makes you happy. Work to make a living, but don’t live to work.
5. Take Advantage of Technology
In the early 90s, you would have been living pretty large if you had a 12-volt black and white TV in your truck. It ain’t 1993 anymore.
Today, many options are available for drivers to keep themselves entertained on the road. You can get satellite tv and radio for a very reasonable price. And some companies will even offer those for free or at a substantial discount as a perk for their drivers.
The availability of internet access has also come a long way in recent years, with plans being widely available at reasonable prices either through your phone plan or with a dedicated hotspot and plan.
I have even seen drivers with full-on gaming rigs in the truck. If that’s your thing, it’s a great way to pass the time while sitting in the dock waiting for them to finish loading or unloading your trailer.
6. Exercise
One of the best ways to feel better on the road is to get a little exercise. Trucking, especially when it’s no-touch freight, is by its very nature a sedentary occupation. Getting a little exercise will not only be good for your overall health, but it can also improve your mental state.
As a truck driver, you spend most of your day sitting, so one of the best things you can do for your body is get out of the truck and go for a walk. This can be as simple as taking a few laps around the truck stop or using the walking trails many rest areas offer for a quick stroll. You could even spend some time walking laps at the shipper or receiver while you are waiting to be loaded or unloaded.
Another good option for getting a little exercise in the truck is to bring a set of resistance bands. They are lightweight and take up very little room but can still offer a decent way to get some strength training on the road.
There is also always the option to do bodyweight exercises or even yoga. Especially if you are at a place that offers a safe, clean out of the way area where you can work out, such as a rest area. A few drivers may look at you funny or snicker, but who cares. You are not working out for them; you’re doing it to make yourself happier and healthier.
7. Bring a Bicycle Along
Bringing a bicycle on the road is a great way to exercise, but it also has many other benefits.
If you have a bike with you, making a quick grocery run down becomes an easy and even enjoyable task. Stuck on the road taking a 34, jumping on your bike, and heading into town to explore or get a good meal is a great way to get out of the truck for a few hours.
Do you need to stop at a business like a bank with no truck parking? Park the truck in a safe, legal spot, and take a quick ride.
I kept a full-size mountain bike on the top bunk of my truck with the front wheel removed, but there are many options for bike storage, including strapping them to the back of the cab. Folding bikes are also another excellent option for truck drivers. Most of these will easily fit on your front seat when folded for easy access and storage. You can even get e-bikes with a throttle that you never have to pedal if that suits your fancy.
8. Keep Your Mind Engaged
Life as a truck driver can be boring sometimes, but you have options to keep your mind engaged. Six hundred-mile days behind the wheel can be a great time to listen to podcasts that educate you about new and interesting things. You could even use your driving time to learn a new language.
Trucking comes with a lot of work and a fair bit of downtime with little to do. You can fill your downtime with learning new skills. For example, I taught myself to play guitar with the help of free youtube video’s in my sleeper during the covid lockdowns. Or you could learn to write computer code, draw or take online college courses. I have even met a few drivers who play the stock markets right from their trucks.
With today’s easy access to the internet and technology, the options to broaden your horizons and learn new skills are endless and readily available even to drivers who are always on the road.
9. Bring Your Pet
Not every company allows pets and those that do may have restrictions on types and breeds, but if allowed bringing your pet along can make life much better when you are out on the road.
When I was looking for an OTR company, one of my requirements was that they would have to allow my 100-pound German Shepard to come along with me. Looking back, one of the best things about driving OTR was the time I spent with my dog. Having him along with me in the truck provided me with a great companion and a heck of a security system. Nobody in their right mind was about to open the door with him sitting in the driver’s seat.
Having him with me did have its drawbacks. Keeping the cab clean with his constant shedding was a losing battle, and I had to make a few extra stops for him to exercise and do his business. When the truck needed service on the road, it also made for a bit more complications, especially if I needed to get a hotel for a day or two. Still, the benefits outweighed the additional difficulties of having him on the road with me.
10. Drive a Little Slower
Yep, I said it. Drive a little slower. Like many truck drivers, my OTR truck was governed. Like many, I wasn’t particularly fond of that fact, but I lived with it and often drove even slower than my governed speed.
Driving slower had nothing to do with getting a bigger MPG bonus or saving money on fuel. For me, it was all about stress reduction and enjoyment. If I was in a pack of traffic all going about the same speed, I dropped my speed a couple of miles an hour and let them flow around me to get me to clear the road.
Having to fight through traffic and make slow passes that take forever just to gain a few minutes at the end of the day irritated the heck out of me, and since I didn’t have the speed to get in front of the pack and away from the rest of the trucks doing 65 mph, I often dropped my speed two or three mph and let them flow around me.
Doing this allowed me to drive with less irritation and stress. It also usually let me maintain better visibility of the road ahead so I could react to changing traffic conditions before it becomes an emergency.
Another thing I often did when another truck was passing me that was only going a mile or two per hour faster was to drop my speed a few mph so they could complete their pass more quickly. This is the courteous thing to do; it also got them away from me faster and kept traffic from getting quite so bunched up behind them.
Slowing down a tad was also an excellent tactic for reducing stress in large cities with heavy traffic. My stress levels dropped drastically when I adjusted my goals for passing through a city like Indianapolis or Chicago, from making good time to making it through safely.
Doing these things doesn’t cost you much time at the end of the day. On an average day, it might be 10 to 20 minutes, and let’s face it. You’ll lose more time than waiting in line to fuel or pay for a roller dog many days, so it’s pretty inconsequential. They will, however, help you to reduce stress and increase happiness, and if you can end your day in a good mood, isn’t that worth more than getting to the truck stop 10 minutes earlier? For me, it sure is.
11. Trip Plan Effectively
Trip planning is an art, and everyone does it differently. But if you want less stress on the road, effective trip planning will be vital. Look at your load, available hours, and the areas you will think about shutting down for the night. If you’re going to be in a place where parking fills up early, you might not want to run your 11-hour clock down too far before arriving at your planned parking spot just in case you have to continue down the road to find a spot.
You might even consider shutting down earlier and getting an early start the next day if it works out with your available hours and appointment windows.
I often had a couple of options in mind each day for a stopping point. One that was my goal and a little less distance in case I had issues or was running behind for any reason.
I also paid particular attention to hazmat routing if I was hauling hazmat and made sure I knew the routes into and out of any shipper or receiver I was going to. Having to improvise a route on the fly in an unfamiliar area in a big truck is not a fun thing to do, after all.
Having a good plan with some backup options will reduce your stress and make your job more enjoyable, especially when you are new to the OTR trucking game.
Conclusion
In conclusion, being an OTR truck driver can be a rewarding career, but it can also be a challenging one. It requires long hours and many sacrifices, which can affect one’s physical and mental well-being.
The good news is that you can significantly improve your life, stress, and attitude as an OTR trucker by making minor adjustments. Try the things I mentioned, or develop a few of your own. Whatever it takes to help you enjoy the job and the lifestyle that comes with it.