Our March newsletter featured a great article from our very own Tim Ray, director of operations, about the view of the road for our truck drivers. We liked it so much that we thought we’d share a version of it here.
A view from the (truck) driver’s seat
If you can’t see a truck’s mirrors, then the driver can’t see you. (Flickr user Cliff Cooper)
Imagine yourself walking through a crowded mall, with all the shoppers milling around you. Mostly, you are all walking the same way and about the same speed but with different destinations.
Now, imagine yourself in a refrigerator box, trying to walk down that same mall, with the same crowd, and not running into anyone as you make that turn into your favorite store. It’s a different way to view your visit to the mall, isn’t it?
A local delivery driver wears many hats during the day. They are, first and foremost, the face of On Time Logistics. On a daily basis, most people do not see the dispatcher, the administrative assistant, or any back office employee of our company.
You see the driver on the road, at your door, or backed up to the dock. The drivers spend their day out in the weather, on the roads, and in the seat of a truck or van, high off the ground.
It’s a different look to the road when you have a 16,000-lb. truck, with an additional 8,000-lb. load strapped into the back of the box. We all have to watch for other drivers and get frustrated by slow-downs, but for a local delivery driver, there is a bit more to consider:
Space between vehicles—Compared to drivers of standard-sized cars, truck drivers must maintain a much larger distance between them and the vehicle in front. Our drivers try to maintain a following distance of about 400 feet—the approximate distance a truck that size needs to stop from 55 mph to zero. That’s longer than football field length that they need unless you want to examine the bumper from your back seat. Our drivers often have cars dart into that space, which creates an unsafe environment.
Blind spots—We can’t say enough about blind spots. Keep in mind that with our delivery drivers using much larger, box-shaped vehicles, their blind spots are more numerous and potentially more complex. We encourage car drivers to remember that if they are behind one of our trucks and they can’t see our side mirrors; that means our drivers can’t see you.
Load shifts due to heavy braking-Have you ever been driving down the road and something in your trunk, perhaps your groceries shifted a little bit? Imagine that happening to an 8,000-lb load. When we have to use our brakes excessively, that puts our drivers at greater risk for their load to shift, redistributing the weight.
Appointments—What is your response to leaving work 10 minutes late to pick up the kids and traffic has slowed on Interstate 49? All kinds of stress in your system. Delivery drivers have multiple appointments during the day. Our tagline is On Time….Every Time and we mean it. We attempt to schedule our drivers in a manner that avoids close or impossible pick up times, but traffic, accidents, and prior appointments can delay drivers.
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