Eating and reading are two pleasures, CS Lewis says somewhere, that combine admirably.
Driving, especially driving a truck, does not make quite the same rarefied companion when it comes to matters of diet.
The long hours and pressures that typically conform to the plight of operating commercial vehicles day in and day out accumulate, as we know, and can have major adverse effects on health.
The ergonomics of the average new prime mover is light years ahead of what they were just less than a decade ago.
The electronic systems that are designed to keep them safer are equal to many luxury cars.
Amid the legislative reforms and transformative changes in technology and levels of comfort, the hours, however, rarely change.
As a driver recently told me at a major carrier, it won’t matter what they drive, it could be a Rolls Royce, but after a 12-hour shift everyone is tired.
The sedentary nature of the job combined with late nights and remote work where food options are limited compound the many obstacles to leading a more balanced healthy lifestyle.
A Monash University study has found rotating shift workers, many of whom are employed in transport and logistics, had higher average 24-hour energy intake than day workers.
According to the results of a 2022 report published in Fortune, between 15 per cent and 20 per cent of the workforce in industrialised nations works shifts. It’s no longer a bug, but a feature of the system.
Nearly 1.5 million employees in Australia work regular shifts as part of their main occupation.
A systematic review of dietary habit and energy intake studies in 2023 discovered that for each recorded day of kilojoule intake, rotating shift workers ate on average 264 more kilojoules than regular day workers.
It all adds up.
Much research is being done in the field with an aim of solving the dietary challenges that confront drivers who work within these limiting parameters.
The frisson of effort emerging around the promotion of worker wellbeing in and around the industry is encouraging. Workers at Australia Post and Linfox recently participated in a fit food challenge conducted by Healthy Heads in Trucks & Sheds.
The results of the six-week trial that included 20 truck drivers and warehouse workers bears repeating here.
Participants were given pre-prepared, dietitian-designed meals that were ready to heat and eat.
On average a weight loss of 3.28kgs was achieved with 5 per cent reporting a positive change in their overall quality of life. Nine participants also reported lower blood pressure.
Initial research into the field — research Viva Energy with its fleet of tankers takes seriously — suggests healthier drivers are also safer drivers.
A recent podcast by Freightwaves produced a startling fact.
In the United States the average life expectancy of a trucker, as they like to call them, is only 61.
That’s 16 years less than the average American.
Nightshift workers like nurses, surgeons, police and firefighters, both here and abroad, are at risk of dying significantly earlier than the rest of the labour force.
They are also acutely susceptible to mental health issues. A good deal has been done in recent years to change the vocational stigma associated with driving trucks.
Image, at least in public relations parlance, is everything.
Truck drivers are still relatively forsaken as a group when you consider whole supply chains rely upon their active presence. Without supply chains national economies collapse.
In an era of heightened labour demand, drivers can’t be used up and discarded like a disposable unit of industry.
That many of their careers are often an outcome of default choices rather than design doesn’t diminish the contribution and sacrifices they make.
December is their peak season. Let them know they are appreciated.
