| Dear {FName}, |
June 1, 2013 |
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We hope you had a safe and happy Memorial Day Weekend and that you took a moment to remember the men and women who are currently serving our country as well as our honored veterans.
Jacquie Knight-Lebis and John Lebis
Trucker Buddy of the Month
March 2013
John Lebis and Jacquie Knight-Lebis, drivers with Schneider National, have been named Trucker Buddies of the Month for March 2013 after being nominated by John Cull, a third-grade teacher at Momauguin School in East Haven, CT.
Cull’s nomination stated that he feels Jacquie in particular has been incredible at writing to the kids. “Her postcards, letters, pictures, pamphlets, emails, etc. come to us weekly,” he said. “We have a bulletin board in the class where we display our treasures from them. Jacquie has handwritten individual letters to each of my students a number of times this year. She writes like a pro, prompting the kids to write back to her by answering her questions. She writes with humor and makes all of her correspondences fun and interesting, but most of all she writes at their level. The kids have learned a lot this year by following John and Jacquie's treks across the country.”
As a result of their Trucker Buddies’ involvement, Cull says the students have become more interested in writing, which was not an easy task for his group of third graders. “They actually look forward to writing to Jacquie and John,” he says. “We are beginning to plan a visit later this spring where the student can meet them, see their truck, and hear their stories in person. The kids are so excited!” Click for photos.
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How old is your truck?
Commercial Drivers, Decision Making and Sleep Part II
Derek Hinton -DOTJobHistory
(You can revisit Part I here)
In Part One I wrote about how OTR drivers make consequential decisions every day, described how bad the lack of sleep can negatively affect decision making, and then showed how the life of an OTR driver is almost uniquely qualified to break every sleep rule.
There are things you can change and things you cannot change. One of the things you can change is sleep quality if you have sleep apnea. And you may not know you have sleep apnea. I know I didn’t.
Sleep Apnea is a condition where, during sleep, a narrowing or closure of the upper airway causes repeated sleep disturbances leading to poor sleep quality and excessive daytime sleepiness. Since excessive sleepiness can be a consequence of sleeping disturbances, drivers with sleep apnea have compromised driving performance leading to increases in the risks of crashes.
One of the interesting things about sleep apnea is that it’s extremely difficult to self-diagnose. For one, you don’t fully wake up in the night to remember, but also, studies have found that a driver self-reporting they are sleepy in the day is not a reliable predictor of whether they have apnea. But almost every objective test shows a clear relationship between performance and the severity of sleep apnea.
There’s several things sleep specialists look for to determine whether to test for sleep apnea: daytime sleepiness, fatigue, being overweight (is that politically incorrect? If so, make that “heavy-set”) snoring and family history.
I didn’t seem to have any of the indicators except family history (my Father) and snoring.
But that may not be quite true. When I left home in the early 1980’s I was fortunate to find a job about 30 miles from my Grandfather who lived in a tiny Oklahoma town. Born in the late 1890’s, he worked as a farmer, pipe fitter and his last job was as the man who took care of an oil lease of multiple oil wells. This was not a white collar job. He checked every pump every day, climbed the metal stairs to every tank to measure the daily output and he had a pipe threader on his pickup’s back bumper that he seemed to use every third day I was with him. He worked till he was 80 years old.
Suffice it to say, he didn’t meet the criteria for sleep apnea, but his snoring kept the livestock agitated the next farm over at night.
And so when my immediate family started getting noise complaints from the neighbors and worse, I started getting complaints from the wife, due to my snoring, I got checked for sleep apnea. This involves going to an office, being hooked up to about 30 wires and then going to sleep. In my case, they determined pretty quickly that I had severe sleep apnea and they brought in a continuous positive airway pressure machine (CPAP) and back to sleep I went. The machine keeps your airway open so that you’re not waking up 45 times an hour (even if you don’t consciously remember waking up).
After all the results were in, I obtained a CPAP for home. It is quiet, doesn’t bother me at night, the snoring is gone and I have a lot more energy in the day.
As a commercial driver, if you find yourself extremely sleepy in the day, have been told you drown out the reefer in the next space with your snoring or seem unduly fatigued, you might want to get checked for sleep apnea and takes the steps to ensure that when you can sleep, you do sleep.
Here are the results of the TruckDriver.com My Old Truck Survey. Looks like some of you must be some pretty good mechanics!
What model year is the truck you are driving right now?
2013 - 20%
2012 - 11%
2011 - 4%
2005-2010 - 31%
2000-2004 - 17%
1999 or older - 17%
Next up, the TruckDriver.com Alma Mater Survey.
Keep on truckin’ and please drive safely.
* * * * *
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