How many hours did you spend sitting on your bottom yesterday? Truck driving is a sedentary career and many drivers find themselves sitting a little, or a lot, too much. Aside from securing loads and walking across the truck stop many truckers spend the entire day sitting down. And when you’re in the middle of … Continue reading “Driving Is Not a Form of Exercise”
When you live your life on the road, eating right can seem impossible. Who has time or the tools needed to cook healthy foods? Eating right is a bit more challenging than driving through your favorite fast food restaurant, but it isn’t impossible (or even that hard) when you get in the habit, even for … Continue reading “Eating Right- Essentials of Health and Wellness for Truck Drivers”
This summer the NHTSA issued a new rule requiring electronic stability control systems (ESC) on new commercial heavy trucks and large buses starting in 2017. It is believed that the new rule will prevent as many as 1,759 crashes, 649 injuries, and 49 deaths each year. In the meantime, what can you do to protect … Continue reading “Preventing Rollovers- What Can You Do?”
Are you getting enough sleep? Many truckers don’t and it can have a negative impact on both quality of life/health and safety behind the wheel. What can you do? How can you get enough sleep with the crazy hours trucking brings? Getting plenty of sleep as an over the road trucker isn’t going to be … Continue reading “Sleep- Essentials of Health and Wellness for Truck Drivers”
Are you taking time for your health? When working long hours on the road and rushing to that next drop it is easy to let the little things, like healthy eating and exercise, slide. Perhaps this is the reason (or at least a contributing factor) that truckers have an average life expectancy several years shorter … Continue reading “The 5 Essentials of Health and Wellness for Truck Drivers”
Should teens be able to drive big trucks? Right now you can’t drive a rental car until 25, but you can start driving 80,000 pound trucks at 21 interstate and intrastate(in most states) at 18. If a new law passes, younger drivers may soon be able to drive heavy trucks across state borders. Proposed regulation … Continue reading “Teens and Big Trucks: Should They Be Allowed to Drive?”
Here at Western Truck Insurance Services, we want you to “Travel with Care”. We all know that transportation is a risky industry (truck drivers are 5x more likely to die in a work related accident than the average worker), but that doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to reduce your risks and increase your safety. Today … Continue reading “A Safer Tomorrow Starts Today- 3 Changes Every Trucker Should Make”
If you don’t have an Accident Prevention Plan, each day on the road is just an accident waiting to happen. This might sound extreme, but the truth is, trucking is an industry with a lot of safety risks and potential hazards; if you aren’t actively preventing accidents, the potential for injury, including serious injury and … Continue reading “Do You Have an Accident Prevention Plan?”
In our last blog post we talked a bit about SMS and SAFER scores. This month we’d like to take a deeper look at these scores and find ways to improve them. How can you reduce your scores? By better understanding your scores and taking a few simple precautions you can improve your ratings. … Continue reading “How Can I Improve My SMS and SAFER Scores?”
The importance of safety in trucking can’t be overstated. Your life and the lives of others depend on your ability to safely get from Point A to Point B or anywhere else you may travel. Safety records, like your SMS or SAFER scores, help measure adherence to important safety practices. These scores provide an … Continue reading “SMS and SAFER Scores: An Introduction”
