Make Your Bed – TruckStruck

By: Lynn Bolster

Sleep. We all say we never get enough. Not only is it rest and restoration for our bodies, but it is also an escape. Just shut your eyes, and everything goes away—well, visually anyway. Our minds still may go a hundred miles an hour, but we eventually drift off. In trucking, sleep is a precious commodity. Hours of service disrupt our normal sleep rhythm, and they don’t take into account that each one of us has a different sleep/body schedule, the way our bodies react to rest or the lack thereof.

On the road, we may miss our ‘real’ bed at home. For some, whose life has been on the road for so long, they sleep better in the truck than in their real bed. I remember one winter night that was windy, rainy, and cold. With each wind blast, the truck shook, and I wanted to be in my real bed so bad I cried. The road had exhausted me, Mother Nature was beating me, and I wanted the peacefulness and security of a bed laden with covers that I could hide under. But with the road as the relentless taskmaster, I laid still, listened to the howling, and watched the street lights rocking in the wind.

Sleep can be hard to find in truck stops and rest areas where ‘commercial company’—or to the rest of us, hookers—knock on the truck doors to earn their living. Many drivers give into temptation, risking their health and putting themselves in danger. As I sat in the truck at about midnight, I’ll never forget what I heard on the CB:

“Hey, driver in the green Pete, when the lady of the night is free, send her over here to me in the red Western Star at the end of the row.”

“10-4 will do, brother.”

Shortly thereafter, I saw the woman walking over to the red truck. All was silent for a while, then this came across:

“Hey, Western Star, can you do me a favor?”

“Sure, what’s up, green Pete?”

“Before that woman leaves your truck, can you get my wallet back?”

“Sure will, driver,” he replied, chuckling.

So you see, I don’t tell this story to be out of line; I tell it because it is real road life, and not only are health and safety at risk but your paycheck is too.

It really helped me to feel less out of whack if I made the bed in the truck each day. I tried to keep the sleep space as only that while keeping the front of the truck for working. It’s hard not to track mud, dirt, and wet clothing into the sleeper, but it should be avoided. We all come up with our systems, and newer, larger trucks, allow more room for actual living. Many old timers share how they just laid a piece of plywood across the seats and used that as their ‘mattress’ in the old-day cab cabovers. They were so tired that not even lying on a board could stop them from dozing.

Foam earplugs are great when trying to sleep in the truck, the kind that squishes up and expands. With the engine idling, they muffle the sound enough so sleep can come, but a knock at the door or an alarm sound can still be heard. When running Florida, refrigerated trailers are a way of life. The refer units cooling the trailers are notoriously noisy and screechy, so earplugs are a must when sleeping around refer loads.

It’s great to see trucks with huge sleepers, showers, and kitchens—really a home on wheels. But at what price is luxury? It adds to overall weight, and that subtracts from your payload if you haul by weight as we did. Our old 1978 Kenworth W900 had a 36” crawl-through sleeper and a glass—yes, glass—window you could crank up between the sleeper and the front of the cab. One night, we decided to test it, rolling it up, but then it wouldn’t go down. We were trapped in the sleeper for an hour. Bill got so mad that he took his boot and kicked the glass, shattering it everywhere. That made him even angrier, and he crawled out of the sleeper, blew his pay on the poker machine in the truck stop, and left me to clean up the mess.

It’s said that we spend one-third of our lives sleeping, and if we live to 75, that’s 25 years of sleep! So this is significant. Remember, the bridge between despair and hope is a good night’s sleep. Rest when you can because, in trucking, you never know what you’ll face tomorrow.

“In peace, I will lie down and sleep, for you alone Lord, make me dwell in safety.” Psalm 4:8