Truck driver attitude is one of the most misunderstood and overlooked problems facing the trucking industry today. It can be defined as the way you conduct yourself in relation to both positive, and negative influences in your life.
These influences can come from anywhere, but are usually things that happen in your home or work environment. Your ability to deal with these influences will give you either a positive, or negative attitude. life as a truck driver is not all about being able to shift the gears or turn the steering wheel.
Truck driver safety is not the only effect of a negative “driver attitude”.
A bad truck driver attitude is like a flat tire. You can’t go anywhere until you change it.
Problems with employee morale, poor customer service, bad company image, higher fuel costs, higher maintenance costs, and lack of highway safety can all be linked to a negative driver attitude.
Many drivers with a negative attitude are often labelled with an “Attitude problem”, but we rarely make an effort to understand the reasons why. A driver with an attitude problem could be overwhelmed by negative influences, and is actually having a “coping” problem.
Drivers with a positive attitude are often referred to as “professional” drivers. This is also a misused term. A positive, happy, stress or problem free driver does not in turn make him a professional. (Although, more professional drivers are better at managing their attitude.)
Negative work related influences like poor treatment, lack of respect for family or home time, and low pay for hours worked are pretty common. We’re also finding an alarming number of burnt out truckers on the road as companies have pushed through almost 2 decades of driver shortages.
Management and dispatchers often compound the problems affecting drivers, because they lack the proper skills to recognize and deal with the issues. All they’re interested in is making sure the loads are covered. Every company has a safety department upstairs preaching “Safety first”, while downstairs the dispatchers are saying “I don’t care, just get it done”. (This is a whole topic in itself.)
How confusing do you think this must be to a driver when there are rewards for following all the rules from the safety department, while dispatch is rewarding drivers that break the rules to get the work done? Talk about a wrong signal being transmitted. Drivers that make the most money in this industry know how to play this little game of pleasing both. Keep in mind we’re generalizing here and not all companies are like this.
If the problems affecting drivers are not fully understood by professionals in the psychological field, how do we expect anyone else to be able to deal with it? It isn’t really that the industry has turned a blind eye to the problem of truck driver attitude, rather than they just haven’t opened that eye enough to see what they need to see.
Most people don’t understand how life is for a truck driver on the road. Even the basic essentials like trying to eat well, sleep well and find a decent place to have a shower.
Life on the road for a driver has daily challenges like trying to find a decent and clean shower.
Instead of resolving issues before setting a driver loose on the roads, dispatchers often feed the fire. It’s not uncommon for them to get upset with drivers looking for a small amount of their own time simply to grab a meal or shower.
We already discussed the consequences of poor driver attitude in relation to fuel, safety and equipment maintenance. Poorly trained dispatchers and managers can indirectly be costing companies substantial amounts of money.
It doesn’t stop there. Allowing a disgruntled worker to drive in this condition could be detrimental to the safety of others. The driver’s level of consideration deteriorates with a poor attitude to the point where he may cut someone off, or cause an accident. Incidents like this make ALL truckers look bad. With so many drivers complaining about the lack of respect from the public, we’re shooting ourselves in the foot.
Whether the problem is work related, personal, or another reason, the trucking industry is failing miserably in identifying personal and psychological problems with drivers. They send you down the highway for weeks at a time working twice the hours of a normal job while living in a box expecting you to operate like a machine.
Human resources staff often can’t recognize, or diagnose psychological problems with drivers. They don’t possess the empathy, understanding, or the educational background to do so. A driver often ends up in anger management courses which usually does little to fix the real problem.
Continue reading Truck Driver Attitude…..
Virtually everyone experiences personal issues in life that can affect their attitude. Some of us don’t quite cope as well as others and this can have a serious negative effect on your attitude at work. There’s also long term personal issues like divorce, which can drag out over a period of years.
Financial problems are another serious problem that can cause stress. Many trucks are equipped with a fridge, microwave, coffee maker, etc… to help keep expenses down, but a driver still needs to get out of the truck for social interaction from time to time.
Truck drivers often eat alone in the truck to keep their daily expenses down from the high cost of truck stop meals.
I started to investigate further into issues around driver attitude as I’d seen many friends and co-workers going through similar cycles that I’d gone through. My final push to go forward with this article was when one of the safest and most professional drivers I know had been labelled with an “Attitude problem”.
Knowing this particular person and his work ethics, I was shocked to hear this. After hearing the whole story, it became perfectly clear as to what happened. All he wanted was a reasonable amount of home time to be with his family. Unfortunately, the dispatchers were pushing him too hard. He finally decided he had to draw the line and the they didn’t like it. Have you ever heard this before?
Along with these obvious external problems of work and personal issues, there may be another problem affecting the mental and physical health of drivers. This one can go virtually undetected for long periods of time.
The hidden problems of Truck Driver Attitude
Some psychologists have claimed that factors affecting your attitude can be explicit or implicit. This makes a lot of sense as our coping mechanisms usually only work when we’re aware of a problem that’s explicit in nature. What if there are problems that are implicit (Subconscious) in nature?
When you realize you’re becoming someone, or something you don’t want to be, you have to make a change. However, it can be difficult to recognize a problem if the effects are happening slowly over time.
No matter how much you love driving a truck, or the freedom that comes with being on the open road, there may be something that’s slowly eating away at your soul. It can beat down your tolerance, ability to cope, and begin to feel like it’s affecting your sanity.
What symptoms did we look at?
The symptoms we’re most concerned with are: depression, anger, aggressive driving, obsessive thoughts (often leading to paranoia), hyper-responsiveness and becoming easily agitated (Which often leads to road/fellow driver rage), sleep disorders, and anxiety. There are a few others as well, but we hope you’re seeing where we’re going with this.
We spent countless hours researching clinical studies and psychological papers to find some logical answers. In the end, we found some interesting correlations between the symptoms found in truckers and symptoms found regarding Solitary Confinement in the prison system.
The prison system refers to this as SHU (Secure Housing Unit or Security Housing Unit). SHU syndrome is a condition that affects the mental health of prisoners in negative ways due to long-term isolation.
How is this similar to trucking? Please don’t jump to conclusions as we’re not trying to make a comparison. We don’t want to make truck driving look like a punishment either. If you feel like it’s a punishment, It may be time to choose another career. Truck driving is an occupation that we’ve chosen to be in.
However, we did find that the conditions and the symptoms related to SHU, are also present in trucking.
- Many drivers live in the bunk of their truck for weeks on end. (Social isolation)
- The bunk of a truck is smaller than a jail cell. (Confined space, loneliness)
- Many drivers work more than 12 hours a day, and are often forced to work illegally over their hours of service. (They’re “controlled” for an excessive amount of hours in their lives, often feeling a lack of freedom.)
Truck drivers spend weeks, months, and some even spend years living in a very small space.
One of the articles we looked at was a well known published study by Stuart Grassian called, the Psychiatric Effects of Solitary Confinement. If you’re interested in further reading visit the link for the full article.
The article is focused around solitary confinement within the prison system, but it also refers to Restricted Environmental Stimulation in other settings. This includes aviation, small group confinement (polar expeditions, and submarines), explorers (outer space or global), and certain medical conditions (most notably, deaf and blind patients).
Grassian also mentions a New England Journal of Medicine Study of fifty long-haul truckers “Experiencing vivid visual hallucinations, and some became disoriented as if in a dream”. I’ve yet to find this study, but would be interested in the full version if anyone has it.
Continue reading Truck Driver Attitude…..
Since there were no real clinical words to describe what we’re talking about, we’re going to call it “Wilson” Syndrome. (This is in no way related to the Wilson’s syndrome related to the thyroid problems). Hopefully, you’ve seen the movie with Tom Hanks called Cast Away. After a plane crash, a lone man survives on a deserted island for four years. His only companion ends up being a volleyball, named Wilson.
In a nutshell, we’re making an effort to understand the negative psychological effects of being away from family, friends, social interaction and environmental stimulation for extended periods of time. In our case as drivers a more appropriate name would be something like “Solitary Employment Syndrome”?
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
We also believe your pre-existing mental state before exposure would play a role in how you’re effected. When we wrote this article, we discussed how ADHD could possibly increase the effects of “Wilson’s Syndrome” in truckers. Some of the effects of solitary confinement are, memory loss, concentration, and shifting attention. (Problems already associated with ADHD.)
We have children with ADHD so it was hard not to consider this one.
Those adults with ADHD that haven’t been diagnosed usually develop strong coping mechanisms to manage their daily lives. With continued exposure to the challenges of trucking life these individuals may be more susceptible to “Wilson Syndrome” without realizing it.
For those of you in a position to make any kind of change, here are a few more things we covered.
Recognizing Trucker Burnout
Do you have a friend, co-worker, or anyone else you know that may be in this position? As drivers we need to be more in tune to one another. If you had a friend with a drinking problem would you try to help?
Ask your dispatcher, manager, or safety department if they can recognize problems with drivers, and what protocol they have in place to help.
Understanding the age, amount of years on the road, and what sort of work a driver has been involved in may help us recognize problems before they get critical.
Having properly trained staff
Staff should be trained to recognize symptoms and deal with issues properly, so bad situations may be diffused and dealt with before they escalate. There should always be someone on staff that communicates with drivers on a more personal level.
If you suspect psychological risk, have a professional in the field do an assessment instead of untrained staff. Drivers can be very protective of their thoughts and usually won’t share information about their mental health and well-being.
We’re all aware of the dangers of drinking and driving yet we overlook the dangers associated with ‘Wilson Syndrome’. Anger, aggressive driving, sleep disorders and anxiety can put many lives at risk. Drivers with ‘Wilson Syndrome’ will usually have a higher risk of road/fellow driver rage.
Be aware that every truck driver that leaves the terminal, a customer’s location, or moves after any negative interaction could be putting other drivers at a safety risk on the highway.
Safe and professional driving is not just a skill. It’s an attitude.
Summarizing this Article
Firstly, this article recognizes the severity of a problem facing truck drivers (Truck Driver Attitude). The problem is real, and widespread. It’s an increasing problem, and not something we can ignore.
Next we looked at the consequences of this problem. The company can be hurt financially in numerous ways, but these effects can negatively impact company image and overall employee morale too. The drivers affected by “Wilson Syndrome” can experience mental health and possibly even physical health issues.
Where do we go from here?
Our goal with this article is to raise awareness to something that may be directly affecting our mental and physical health. We hope to generate enough interest from our readers to pursue this matter further. We need safer highways, and understanding driver attitude is just one more thing that can get us there.
Of course, these are my own personal thoughts and I’m always open to comments both positive and negative about this article. We’d like to hear your feedback, comments, or stories related to this article.
You can read comments by others, or register to have your say in our forums buy visiting the driver attitude discussion forum.