Editorial: Trucker Health and Wellness
Perhaps in addition to reviewing trucking companies’ financial performance, it would be worthwhile to measure such things as the health of their drivers.
In the case of Celadon Group, Con-way Truckload and Prime Inc., their efforts to improve the health of their truck drivers have set them apart, with each receiving awards recently.
“We want healthy employees to help us be successful, and we’re helping them to help themselves,” said Celadon CEO Paul Will. His company ranked No. 8 on a list compiled by Healthiest Employers, a technology and data research company.
Likewise, Con-way was honored by the American Heart Association and Prime by Everyday Health Media.
The honors are even more noteworthy in light of the new report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention emphasizing the poor state of health of many longhaul truck drivers.
It found that nearly 70% of drivers are obese, 50% smoke cigarettes and 14% have diabetes.
Speaking earlier this month, Anne Ferro, head of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, called the CDC findings “troubling” and suggested her agency could potentially take a direct role in regulating the health of truck drivers.
Whether driver health should be part of the agency’s core mission may be debated, but the regulatory, financial and operational reasons to underscore the need for additional strides in driver health should not be.
For 2013, driver health and wellness placed No. 10 on the American Transportation Research Institute’s survey of critical issues, the second year in a row that it appeared on the list.
ATRI’s report recommended increasing the availability of exercise facilities and healthy food choices at truck stops, a step that many are already undertaking.
Other recommendations were to create a model program for carriers and to promote research that quantifies the return-on-investment potential of health programs.
ATRI also noted that health and wellness directly affect the driver shortage and driver retention, and that an improvement in health could have positive implications for industry safety.
There is no shortage of issues facing trucking, and it seems a new one arises every month. Few come with easy and unanimous answers.
Yet, as trucking tries to find solutions to the driver shortage and takes steps to jointly raise the industry’s image, a first step toward some of those solutions may be taking notice of what some companies are already doing.
