Driver health and wellness is appearing on the TII Top Ten list for the second year in a row. More than one in 10 respondents (11.0%) feel this issue is important enough to rank it first, second, or third. Among driver respondents, the concern over health and wellness is even stronger, with that issue ranking eighth.
Given the concerns over driver retention and the driver shortage, as well as potential health issues related to truck driver lifestyle challenges, there has been a concerted effort to make the trucking industry healthier. In addition to obvious lifestyle benefits, an improvement in driver health may also have positive implications for industry safety as research has found a positive correlation between driver health and driver safety.
Proposed Strategies:
a) Encourage increased availability of exercise facilities and healthy food choices at truck stops/travel plazas. Despite recent improvements in healthy options at truck stops, 40% of respondents feel the first step in improving driver health would be to make the food offerings at public and private truck parking facilities healthier.
b) Create a model health and wellness program based on national best practices to provide guidance for carriers. Development of a health and wellness program based on best practices from around the country could provide carriers with valuable information on how to create and implement a program of their own. Just over 30% of respondents (30.3%) believe this is the best strategy for dealing with driver health and wellness.
c) Promote research that quantifies the return-on-investment potential of driver health and wellness programs. There have been demonstrated cases of carriers successfully implementing driver health and wellness programs and achieving a positive return-on-investment. Additional research into the benefits of these programs could encourage other carriers to adopt programs that save money and improve driver health. This is the preferred strategy for 29.4% of respondents.
