Driving for Work

Traffic crashes kill more American workers than any other single cause. Not falls, not machinery — driving. And most of it happens in an ordinary pickup on an ordinary road.

The phone

• Texting while driving is banned outright for commercial drivers under 49 CFR 392.80, and it is banned here for everyone in a company vehicle, all the time.
• Hands-free is not risk-free. The impairment is in your attention, not your hands. You look straight at things you do not see.
• Set it up before you move, or pull over. Navigation, playlist, the call. If a call has to happen, it happens stopped.
• Nobody at this company expects you to answer while driving. If you are getting called and it feels like you have to pick up, tell me and I will fix that.

Speed and space

• Speed limits are for perfect conditions. Rain, gravel, a loaded bed, a trailer, low sun, or unfamiliar road — all of those mean slower than the sign.
• Four seconds behind the vehicle in front, more when loaded or towing. A loaded truck stops far worse than an empty one and nothing about the pedal tells you that until you need it.
• Back into the space when you arrive, so you drive out forward. Most work-vehicle damage happens reversing out of somewhere.

The load

• Secure everything. A toolbox at 60 mph weighs about fifty times what it does on the ground, and it comes forward through the cab in a stop.
• Ladders and pipe get tied at both ends with a flag if they overhang.
• Check the tyres, lights, mirrors and load before you pull out. Two minutes.

Fatigue

The dangerous drive is the one home at the end of a long shift, on the road you know best, in the last twenty minutes. Being awake nineteen hours impairs you about as much as being at the legal alcohol limit. If you are fighting to stay awake, stop and call — nobody here would rather have you push on.

Belt on, every trip, everyone, including in the yard.