If you ever have been passed by a Roadway truck, you might have noticed the big custom made wooden boxes that many of the company’s drivers carry to hold their radios, tape players and CBs, strapped conspicuously into the passenger seat. As Roadway drivers are generally home every night or every other night and have little to carry, these boxes make sense. Short-haul and slip-seat drivers need an easy way to manage their gear. A driver with this kind of job wants his own radios, and he wants a good looking, self-contained unit in which to carry them. Most drivers do not have this luxury and must deal with packing and unpacking constantly. As Bob Knoop, an independent driver who often fills in when a regular driver is unavailable remarked, “Just as I get familiar with where to store it all, it’s time to give the truck back to the regular driver.”
Whatever kind of driving you do, you are probably always looking for a better way to carry, store and manage your gear. What you take with you has a great deal to do with your comfort level on the road. If you are a long-haul driver, out for a week or a month, what you take with you can make the difference between a good trip and a very bad one. Howard Glass runs for a private carrier and has a regular route. He is never gone more than four days. For Howard, things are simple. His main concern is which books on tape to get from the library.
It is not as easy for most drivers as it is for Howard. Most drivers need to plan. You might say that managing your living and working space is as important as managing your time. If drivers are experts, they are certainly experts at time management. Taking space management seriously can only add to your efficiency and comfort. Of course, knowing the nature of the outfit you signed on with and how long you will be out has a direct bearing on what and how much you take. Some outfits let you take the truck home. This makes things so much easier that it is often used as an enticement to attract new drivers. Not having to take everything out of the truck at a terminal, take it home, then cart it back and arrange it all again is worth some cents per mile. If you have to do that, you will probably take less gear than you would like, and the likelihood of shortchanging yourself goes up.
You may be lucky enough to drive for a company like J.B.Hunt, where the larger terminals have a rack to which drivers can pull up when loading and unloading personal gear. Slip-seat drivers in Hunt’s operation make extensive use of this facility, according to Tom Sapp, corporate safety manager. Despite such aids, the hassles of packing and unpacking gear influences a driver’s decisions about what and how much to take. But drivers begin organizing their gear pretty much as every traveler does: Necessity is the mother of packing. Among necessities, clothing is first.
Many drivers like to shower every day, which means that if they are out for the typical 10 to 14 days, they will want to take clothes for at least a week and plan to do laundry about halfway through the trip. Others find that the demands of the job do not permit the luxury of daily showers, which make fewer clothes necessary. If a crease in your jeans and a new starched shirt every day is your style, you may want to invest in a hanging suit carrier. This will allow you to put each shirt and pair of jeans on a separate hanger, to be carry it into the shower. Long and thin, suit carriers are easily stored on a hook behind the passenger seat or in a closet if you have one in your sleeper. They maintain the condition of your clothes, and they are easy to take out of the truck when you get home. Some drivers have a set of clothes for the truck and simply leave them there, doing laundry on the road all the time. This is an option, although if you like that crease in your jeans, it is probably efficient to take everything home. There are few facilities for getting things ironed and pressed in truckstops.
As your time on the road progresses, it becomes more necessary to keep clean and used clothing separate. If you throw your jeans and shirt over your shoulder still on the hanger, you probably want to take a bag in that carries your shaving kit and other necessities. It is convenient to have a bag with more than one compartment so that used clothing can be stored separately.
If you like to work in work clothes and not worry about mussing up the crease in your jeans, a decent carry-on bag will probably be more your style. Of course, coveralls are an option, particularly if your wagon is a flat. However, storaging coveralls can be a problem, especially once they get dirty. The side box may be a good place for coveralls, rolled and slipped into a plastic bag and kept near the front where they can be grabbed before handling your cheater bar or straps. The problem with storing coveralls in the side box is that having to get out of the truck in rain or snow to put them on defeats the purpose of wearing them. You may have room under the seat for them.
