5 common problems every Dallas truck driver goes through

The idea of being a trucker is a romantic one: you spend your waking days on the road with only the wind on your back and your trusty, multi-ton steed for company. The reality, however, can hit hard, especially for your first year as a trucker: long days stuck in traffic, restrictive budgets, and less-than-ideal pay.

Of course, if you slug it out long enough, you get used to the grind and you’ll start building valuable experience that delivery companies will pay a premium for. This might take a year or two, but the important thing is you have to keep truckin’ for you to start reaping the benefits later on.

The Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex is one of the busiest metropolitan areas in the entire United States. So while driving out of, say, Lubbock might be a breeze, the closer you get to the Dallas-FW metroplex, the heavier traffic gets. It’s not just a minor annoyance, either: traffic congestion cost the US economy a whopping $87 billion. Unsurprisingly, truckers pay a huge part of that deficit, what with added expenses to gas, maintenance, and of course, missed deadlines. Some companies will often dock a trucker’s pay if a delivery is late, so proper schedule management is a crucial skill truckers need to develop in order to make the most bang for their buck and not fall behind on their scheduled deliveries and pickups.

Truckin’ ain’t easy: yes, it’s romantic to spend most of your days on the road, but you’re not riding a horse there, cowboy. For a driver to make the most out of their delivery and to stay on schedule, they’ll usually drive to the maximum allowable driving time of 14 hours. This is then followed by a minimum of ten hours of rest, eight of which will probably be used for sleeping, and the rest being used for eating, showering, and relaxation.

This doesn’t leave truckers with much time for their physical health. That and the lack of nutritious food options in truck stops, and it’s easy to see why truckers run into all sorts of health problems while driving through Dallas roads.

In the trucking industry, there’s no such thing as too much experience: road conditions aren’t always going to be ideal, traffic is going to be heavy from time to time, and adverse weather conditions can make even the most experienced drivers sweat bullets. This is why many companies offer in-facility road training so drivers can build experience in a safe, controlled environment.

The problem? Timing. In between deliveries, much-needed R&R, time away with family, and everything else in between, there’s really not a lot of time to devote to training, yet it’s an important aspect of being a successful trucker. This is why most drivers will have to either sacrifice their R&R or dig deep and find a way to manage driving their truck, training, and down time effectively.

One of the things truck drivers love to do is tinker with their rig. There’s a certain sense of pride when a man can bring out the best in their machine. That being said, trucks are notoriously expensive to maintain, with many drivers shelling out up to $20,000 every year just to make sure their vehicle is operating at maximum efficiency. But that’s really not something you should skip; in fact, when it comes to truck maintenance, the more time you devote to it, the better. But time constraints can severely limit a person’s ability to maintain a well-oiled machine, so what’s their next best option?