Life Expectancy of a Truck Driver in the U.S.

[Kaitzilla]

Giant trucks on the highway are both vital and menacing.
After my family member almost died due to one changing lanes, I looked them up and learned nothing.

https://markets.businessinsider.com...-industry-facts-us-truckers-2019-5-1028248577

The United States is hugely dependent on truckers.

Data show that trucking moves 71% of all the freight in America, and nearly 6% of all the full-time jobs in the country are in the trucking industry.

The industry employs millions of drivers and generates hundreds of billions of dollars in annual revenue.

Watching Smokey and and Bandit doesn't really count either.

They are a mystery!
I can't even find the average life expectancy of a truck driver and there are millions of them.

It's got to be low I imagine.
Constant road crashes, no sleep, plentiful stimulants, terrible food, and sitting 40+ hours a week.

This thread is for trucks and truckers.
Monster trucks and Ford F650's count too since they can't fit into parking spaces.

 

[FriendlyFire]

generally there are limits on truckers driving hours, I think its 10hrs consecutive driving with forced 30min break and then after X hours you have to sleep for a certain time
This results in both good and bad behavior, often truckers will speed to beat the clock due to the way their contracts are set up penalties for late delivery
I read the pay is decent for a non skilled job

But companies are testing automated trucks now, they running them over short distances in low traffic areas but in the future id imagine most driving jobs will be run by robots

 

[Zkribbler]

I searched "life expectancy of a truck driver" and found:

According to recent driver health studies, the average lifespan of a professional truck driver is 61 years of age. Since the mean life expectancy for an American is about 78 years, that number falls a significant 17 years short. It should be noted that the majority of professional truck drivers in the US are male, so a comparison to the average lifespan of an American male might be more accurate. At 61 years, a truck driver will have a life that ends 15 years earlier than that of the average American man. These numbers are startling, and they won't go away unless drivers take immediate action to improve their health.

Professional drivers have such low life expectancies from a variety of factors. Weight issues are a big part of the concern. While about 26% of the population is considered obese, nearly half of all truck drivers are extremely overweight. There are many harmful consequences of being grossly overweight including high blood pressure, increased risk for heart attack and stroke, increased risk for diabetes, and more.

A few major theories explain why professional drivers might live shortened lives. The first is lack of exercise. The driver position requires that individuals remain seated in a cramped truck cabin for many hours at a time. Drivers may work anywhere between 8 and 16 hours in a single day. This type of work environment is detrimental to health because drivers rarely get any physical activity. One of the only chances a driver gets to exit the vehicle is when he needs to fill up the tank at a pit stop.

Poor diet is the next major cause of obesity and poor health in professional drivers. Since most are on very strict schedules and can be punished for not arriving at checkpoints on time, drivers usually resort to fast food for every single meal of the day. As many of you already know, the combination of poor diet and lack of exercise is a recipe for disaster.

 

[Kaitzilla]

That "driver health study" link is dead.

No way is it 61 years either.
There would be an outcry.

Even if 1 out of 10 drivers got murdered on the road at age 30, that would only drag the average down 5 years, not 15.

 

[stinkubus]

Not really. Those type of dudes don't really put down roots. Even their friends and families don't see much of them. It's a solitary lifestyle.

 

[Bamspeedy]

LIfe expectancy or on-the-job fatality rate?

Life expectancy by occupation is tricky. People change careers. People retire. People generally don't become bank managers until they are pretty old. How are all those factored in?

'Sitting down all day', sure, but so does data entry operators.

On the job fatality rate, there will be small changes year-year in the rankings depending on how jobs are grouped together or what years they use, but truck drivers are up there, slightly more dangerous than a farmer, slightly more safer than the garbage man.
Of course 'Truck driver' includes everything from the bread man driving a van-like truck around town 8 hours a day M-F, to the '18 wheelers' driving across the country for three days and then back again for another three days (OTR-Over The Road).

https://www.businessinsider.com/the-most-dangerous-jobs-in-america-2018-7#:~:text=Logging workers, fishers, aircraft pilots,the top of the list.
https://www.ishn.com/articles/112748-top-25-most-dangerous-jobs-in-the-united-states

On a humorous note, I looked up life expectancy by job and one of the top hits was Scientificamerican and I could not understand why the life expectancies seemed so wrong (teachers 30-35).
Then I noticed the date..... July 31, 1858

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/longevity-of-persons-engaged-in-dif/

 

[Kaitzilla]

The F650 really does exist.
Makes those SUV drivers look small!

I like the license plates.

He starts driving it at 17:30

 

[Kaitzilla]

LIfe expectancy or on-the-job fatality rate?

Life expectancy by occupation is tricky. People change careers. People retire. People generally don't become bank managers until they are pretty old. How are all those factored in?

'Sitting down all day', sure, but so does data entry operators.

On the job fatality rate, there will be small changes year-year in the rankings depending on how jobs are grouped together or what years they use, but truck drivers are up there, slightly more dangerous than a farmer, slightly more safer than the garbage man.
Of course 'Truck driver' includes everything from the bread man delivering a van-like truck around town 8 hours a day M-F, to the '18 wheelers' driving across the country for three days and then back again for another three days (OTR-Over The Road).

https://www.businessinsider.com/the-most-dangerous-jobs-in-america-2018-7#:~:text=Logging workers, fishers, aircraft pilots,the top of the list.
https://www.ishn.com/articles/112748-top-25-most-dangerous-jobs-in-the-united-states

On a humorous note, I looked up life expectancy by job and one of the top hits was Scientificamerican and I could not understand why the life expectancies seemed so wrong (teachers 30-35).
Then I noticed the date..... July 31, 1858

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/longevity-of-persons-engaged-in-dif/

Ya, life expectancy.
How long can people who sign up to be a truck driver expect to live on average?


Nice info

18. Small engine mechanics
Fatal injury rate: 15 per 100,000 workers
Total deaths (2018): 8
Salary: $37,840
Most common fatal accidents: Transportation incidents, violence and other injuries by persons or animals

Wow
Small engine mechanics have a tough life too.

 

[Bamspeedy]

The F650 really does exist.
Makes those SUV drivers look small!

I like the license plates.

He starts driving it at 17:30

19:01 in that video, him in the pickup is almost sitting at same height as the guy in the 18 wheeler, or it at least gives an illusion that he is.

Wow

Small engine mechanics didn't even make the the other list. But, yeah, the 'most common fatal accidents' don't seem to be directly related to the job (it happened on the job, but not from a danger normally expected from the nature of that job)

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Not really. Those type of dudes don't really put down roots. Even their friends and families don't see much of them. It's a solitary lifestyle.

My dad was a trucker and worked for a variety of companies. When it was local (in the city, or at least delivering around the county), we could expect him home for supper every night. But he also drove trucks for an engineering firm involved in the O&G industry, so he'd be all over the province and sometimes into the Territories. We wouldn't see him for weeks, sometimes for months.

My mother's second husband was also a trucker. Let's just say that he was... flexible... about when he came home. It led to divorce #2 for my mother, and good riddance to him.

LIfe expectancy or on-the-job fatality rate?

Life expectancy by occupation is tricky. People change careers. People retire. People generally don't become bank managers until they are pretty old. How are all those factored in?

'Sitting down all day', sure, but so does data entry operators.

Data entry operators may risk carpal tunnel syndrome and other conditions from engaging in repetitive motion all day, or not getting up and moving much, but at least they're not at the mercy of the weather, road conditions, other drivers, avalanches, mud slides, etc. They also get more frequent bathroom and food breaks.

On a humorous note, I looked up life expectancy by job and one of the top hits was Scientificamerican and I could not understand why the life expectancies seemed so wrong (teachers 30-35).
Then I noticed the date..... July 31, 1858

Sometimes those bratschildren can be hard to handle... I'm glad I realized early on in my B.Ed. that I really don't like kids enough to be surrounded by 30 of them 7 hours/day, 5 days/week, 10 months of the year (minus Christmas and Easter). I did eventually become a teacher, but it was one-on-one music lessons, rather than in a school setting.

Sombre realization... most of the teachers I ever had are now either dead or senior citizens. There were a couple of student teachers who might still be this side of 65...

 

[Chicken Pizza]

The telegraph, railroad tracks, power lines and internet cables weren't any problems. Where's a global bottle tube system already?

The truckers can build it and then do the daily maintance work.

 

[Samson]

The telegraph, railroad tracks, power lines and internet cables weren't any problems. Where's a global bottle tube system already?

The truckers can build it and then do the daily maintance work.

Isn't that called the railway?

 

[Hrothbern]

Giant trucks on the highway are both vital and menacing.
After my family member almost died due to one changing lanes, I looked them up and learned nothing.

https://markets.businessinsider.com...-industry-facts-us-truckers-2019-5-1028248577

The United States is hugely dependent on truckers.

Data show that trucking moves 71% of all the freight in America, and nearly 6% of all the full-time jobs in the country are in the trucking industry.

The industry employs millions of drivers and generates hundreds of billions of dollars in annual revenue.

Heinlein wrote a nice SF story on the importance of transport with "The Roads Must Roll" with as element for the plot unionising and power.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Roads_Must_Roll

"The Roads Must Roll" is a 1940 science fiction short story by American writer Robert A. Heinlein. It was selected for The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, 1929–1964 anthology in 1970.[1]

The story is set in the near future, when "roadtowns" (wide rapidly moving passenger platforms similar to moving sidewalks, but reaching speeds of 100 mph) have replaced highways and railways as the dominant transportation method in the United States.

Heinlein's themes are technological change and social cohesion. The fictional social movement he calls functionalism (which is unrelated to the real-life sociological theory of the same name), advances the idea that one's status and level of material reward in a society must and should depend on the functions one performs for that society.

In the first section of the narrative, a stormy meeting takes place at a Sacramento Sector Guild Hall of the technicians working "down inside", among the very noisy great rotors which keep the moving roads going. Speakers voice various grievances and call for immediate strike action. "Shorty" Van Kleeck, the Chief Deputy Engineer of the Sacramento sector, appears and declares his sympathy with the technicians' demands and effectively places himself at their head. As would become clear later, it was Van Kleeck who instigated the technicians' agitation in the first place.

The road's workforce is sharply divided into two classes - the technicians, who are unionized civilians, and the engineers, who are organized as Transport Cadets, an elite paramilitary organization formed by the US Military to keep this crucial infrastructure running. The technicians feel some hostility to the "arrogant" engineers. Van Kleeck - himself a senior engineer who had "come up from the ranks" manipulates this hostility, with the intention of catapulting himself into a position of personal power.

After this initial scene, the point of view shifts - and remains for the rest of the story - to Van Kleeck's superior Larry Gaines, Chief Engineer of the Diego-Reno Roadtown - at the outset yet unaware of the brewing trouble. He is busy entertaining Mr. Blenkinsop, the Australian Transport Minister, who is looking into Road technology with an eye to introducing it in Australia. Gaines's explanation of the Road machinery to Blenkinsop is a device to bring the reader into the world of the Roads.

 

[EnglishEdward]

Yies, it is a little dissappointing for some of us in our old age that many of those things (rolling roads,
flying cars, colonisation of Mars) the sci-fi writers promised us in our youth, have not come to be.

 

[Samson]

Yies, it is a little dissappointing for some of us in our old age that many of those things (rolling roads,
flying cars, colonisation of Mars) the sci-fi writers promised us in our youth, have not come to be.

I want my jetpack!!!

 

[Hrothbern]

Yies, it is a little dissappointing for some of us in our old age that many of those things (rolling roads,
flying cars, colonisation of Mars) the sci-fi writers promised us in our youth, have not come to be.

smile yeah
I was sooo thrilled by SF in my youth, whereby my main interest always was the interaction between a tech and the social-societal, both ways effects. Mostly in SF with a tech causing effects.
My hight time SF reading was 18-22 and then it became behavioral stuff, first animals and as other offspring, and more of my time, fantasy took over.
But yeah... some disappointment indeed how slow things can move is certainly there... also in the field of early hominids and cradle of civilisation archeology.

 

[Samson]

also in the field of early hominids

? This is one field that is currently progressing at a speed and richness that I did not expect.

 

[Hrothbern]

? This is one field that is currently progressing at a speed and richness that I did not expect.

yes and no
There are enough new findings to keep up a decent level dripping of news on this frontier.
I do not have any agregated overview of resources spend on this hominid research, but my guess is that when we all drink one less beer per year, their budget goes up enormously !

The thing is that I am regarding hominids very much interested in the interaction, both ways, between genetic changes and cultural + tech developments.
How do you spread that new gene that enables to handle lactose better among the wider global human population when this became beneficial when milk from goats, reindeer, cattle became available from the tech domestic animal keeping.

Just as example of a bit more recent time a societal "invention" carved in stone by tradition on securing a defenswe against inbreeding and a katalysator for spreading newly mutated good genes. Culture taking influence on the evolutionary genetics in neolithic era. The other effect that trade secrets developed in the one tribes spread out better to other tribes. Trade secrets like a better tech on pottery, herbs, garment techs, music instruments, songs for cohesion, etc, etc.
The neolithic bronze age farmers that flooded one day the fertile spots, the sweet spots of the Netherlands (somewhere 4,000 BC), became slowly more "advanced" which enabled them to prosper in the dry grounds of NL (though less fertile than the loess soil south of the Rhine).
When the Romans came to South of the Rhine those dry grounds just North of the Rhine in NL (the Veluew area, sandy plateau made by the ice age gletsjers), had a stable society and since recent data (from volunteers doing advanced air reconnaissance in homebound Covid time ! with drones and software) we know that is was for that period of time for only farmer communities very population dense in the pre-Roman period.
From Roman sources: the tradition of the many small tribes, the many small farmer communities was to:
* the boys were send to other tribes for the second part of their education-development to adult
* always marry up with someone of another tribe.
* it looks very much that there was a max of only one marriage per other tribe (for a given period).

Further back in time it makes me ask many unanswered questions
For example:
Is it so that homo sapiens had also as strong cultural feature that it had a wider geographic and therefore also genetic range for this crossbreeding than Neandethal etc ?
Already as hunter-gatherers, small groups up to small tribes (the governance system of hunter-gatherers does not encourage big tribes), this inter-breeding must have had good evolutionary effects. After all the success of a species can very well be measured by the size of the gene pool it can develop and maintain.
Big summer gatherings, of a holy enough nature to get a peace period between tribes, can drive intermingling of genes and "inventions" (cultural, techs) very much forward.
It looks more and more that one of the reasons the Neanderthal disappeared is that their genepool became smaller and smaller.
And ofc these blood bounds also mitigated the risk on warfare between tribes !

 

[Samson]

It looks more and more that one of the reasons the Neanderthal disappeared is that their genepool became smaller and smaller.

You know the news this week is that is was because of the magnetic poles swapping, and they named it after Douglas Adams 'cos it happened 42 thousand years ago?

One temporary flip of the poles, known as the Laschamps excursion, happened 42,000 years ago and lasted for about 1,000 years.
Now scientists say the flip, together with a period of low solar activity, could have been behind a vast array of climatic and environmental phenomena with dramatic ramifications. “It probably would have seemed like the end of days,” said Prof Chris Turney of the University of New South Wales and co-author of the study.
Writing in the journal Science, Turney and his colleagues describe how they carried out radiocarbon analyses of the rings of ancient kauri trees preserved in northern New Zealand wetlands, some of which were more than 42,000 years old.
This allowed them to track over time the rise in carbon-14 levels in the atmosphere produced by increasing levels of high energy cosmic radiation reaching the Earth during the Laschamps excursion. As a result they were able to date the atmospheric changes in more detail than offered by previous records, such as mineral deposits.

They also suggest the rise in the use of caves by our ancestors around this time, as well as the rise in cave art, might be down to the fact that underground spaces offered shelter from the harsh conditions. The situation may also have boosted competition, potentially contributing to the end of the Neanderthals, Turney said.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

No way is it 61 years either.
There would be an outcry.

Not sure if this is an incredibly subtle joke or just a refreshingly naive view of the absolute disdain with which low-paid workers are treated in America (and everywhere else). Sacrificing working class people with absolutely no second though is one of the very few things both parties can agree on.