Are company owners finally ready to address driver safety concerns?

A plywood sign with “Death Row Parking” spray-painted on it is never a good indicator of personal safety, especially on the southeast side of Nashville when you’re loaded to the gills with flat-screen televisions and sticking out like a sore thumb on a Pterodactyl.

Riding around in circles looking for a warehouse that has no discerning information on the outside of it, on a block that jumps from 3200 to 7764 for no apparent reason other than to make truck drivers do circles looking for a warehouse in a dangerous part of town, is absolutely no fun. It’s also dangerous, but I think I mentioned that.

(I know this scenario to be true because I was in the truck when George was dispatched with this load, and I was scared enough to have to peel my eyelids off my forehead when we finally got out of there.)

The fact of the matter is a lot of warehouses are in depressed areas where land is cheap and no one owns much so they don’t complain about big truck noise, and if they do, no one cares. It’s a business decision. Just like sending drivers with trailers full of goodies into these areas.

Here’s another fun fact – some dispatchers or brokers won’t divulge that information ahead of time – the onus is on the driver to know and plan safe ingress and egress. There’s more than one driver out there with a rookie story about being sent to some ungodly bad place with no knowledge of it. The ones with stories are the ones who lived to tell about it.

Not everyone is that lucky.

Trucking has always been a dangerous profession. It’s not getting better.

When narrowed down to more detailed occupations official numbers released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics regarding occupational fatalities for 2018, heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers had the most, at 831, according to the report.

This is not surprising news to seasoned road professionals who spend a majority of their time dodging inattentive drivers, figuring out how to get their load from “A” to “B” without ending up in the “XYZ,” and at the end of a long day looking for a safe place to park and sleep.

It’s a sad statement to make that eating, showering and pooping become secondary thoughts when the clock is out of time and you’re still sitting in a dock in one of these dangerous places. It’s actually quite inhumane and one of the (hundred million) reasons flexibility in the hours of service is necessary.

All the flexibility in the world doesn’t help if there’s not enough safe parking with decent, clean facilities available. It’s the 21st century, and we’re still fighting for enough safe parking for professional truck drivers. That’s a damn shame.

Regarding recent public statements from officious officials who have never once been in West Memphis, Ark, on a Friday night but wouldn’t hesitate to send a truck full of Family Dollar goodies out there to the distribution center at any given time of the day or night, y’all better be careful. You might start promising things you should have made good on a long time ago.

Be safe out there drivers. We see you, and we appreciate you.