According to many industry experts, however, the fact is that truck drivers basically gut it out when they don't feel well—until they're just too sick to go any farther.

"Sick days aren't an option for truckers. They never have been," says Todd Spencer, executive vice president of the Owner Operators Independent Drivers Assn. (OOIDA). "You suck it up and do it, if you at all can. Obviously, truckers do not get colds; they do not get the flu. None of these things can be part of the job assignment simply because just-in-time delivery doesn't work with things like that.

"For a number of leased operators, there are economic penalties if you don't deliver when you are supposed to deliver. Getting sick is not an option. Now, realistically, drivers do actually have colds and flu and will be driving trucks. They will be trying to gut it out."

ECONOMICS
Jim Schommer, director of operations for CRST, Cedar Rapids, IA, agrees truckers tend to "gut it out" more than other workers. "I don't have numbers, but I would say drivers have far fewer sick days than non-driving employees," he says.

He attributes that mainly to economics. "Drivers and owner-operators get paid to go down the road. When they tell us they are too sick to drive, that generally means they are sick. Owner-operators are just like any other independent business people. A store owner isn't going to keep his business closed just because he doesn't feel well."

Health insurance

When you are sick on the road and have to seek medical care, how are you going to pay for it? If you are a company driver, chances are you participate in a company health insurance plan. We've noted in previous issues that for company drivers, health benefits are among the most important factors they should consider when looking for a company. The vast majority of long-haul companies offer some health insurance as well as other benefits. Owner-operators, on the other hand, tend to carry their own insurance, if at all. According to Todd Spencer, executive vice president of OOIDA, nearly half of all owner-operators do not carry health insurance. "The last time we surveyed owner-operators, upwards of 45% did not have medical insurance," Spencer says. Other recent surveys have shown that the percentage of owner-operators without health insurance may be less than 40%. Figures also show that the majority of those who do have medical insurance subscribe to nationwide health plans, as opposed to hometown HMO plans--and for obvious reasons. While the hometown HMO plan may be great for the spouse and kids, it won't do you much good if you get sick while you're on the road far from home.

Randy Moore, customer service coordinator for Mercer Transportation, Louisville, KY, says that while it's not unheard of to have a driver call in too sick to drive, when it does happen, the situation is a "worse case scenario."

Mercer works exclusively with owner-operators. "Truckers can't afford to be off for any length of time," Moore says. "They usually go until they just can't go any more. Typically, when we find out about something like that, it's usually to the point to where they just can't go any more and they are under a doctor's care or in the hospital or something like that."

THE exCEPTION
Calling in sick because you have a cold, on the other hand, is "certainly the exception to the rule," he says.

CRST runs almost exclusively teams, so a sick driver can take it easy and let his partner handle the driving for a day until he is feeling better, Schommer says. If a driver is laid up, then the company may send another truck to pick up the team's load.

"If a guy is sick for just a couple of days, we'll have his partner stay with him. The tractor would remain with the team, but we might transfer the load to another truck. Then, when the driver was released for work, we would dispatch them out for another load."

In most cases, how companies handle a driver too sick to go on depends on the driver's situation and the freight. "Everyone driving for us is an owner-operator," Mercer's Moore says. "They just take care of themselves in that event and advise us of what's going on. If we have to make arrangements for them or the load, we do"

"We've had instances where we've had a driver on one coast and their family is on the other coast and they are in such a bad way that we helped make arrangements to bring a man's wife out to him."

In such cases, the freight may be moved to another truck. "We usually try to find a driver to finish delivering that load or we transfer it onto another truck. However, if the customer isn't in a big hurry for the freight and can afford to wait a couple of days until the driver is back on the job, we'll wait and have the original driver go ahead and deliver the load."

Truckers in general are hard-working people. But choosing to gut it out when you're sick can have disastrous consequences. Drivers have to weigh the economic benefit of keeping the load moving against safety and health concerns.

DIFFERENT INDUSTRY
"Trucking is a different industry," Spencer says. "It's an industry that by and large, at least from the owner-operator part of it, attracts people who want to work and want to work hard. They want to be productive and they want to be good at what they do. But, you have to be able to recognize when you cannot do it. You have to be able to tell the people you are hauling for, 'I'm sick, I can't do it.'"

"A driver has to make good decisions with regards to safety," CRST's Schommer says. "It's one thing to not feel well and still go to work in an office. But having a bad day and making bad decisions because you're sick while driving an 80,000-lb. load down the road is a little bit different."

SAFETY ABOVE ALL
"Safety is above and beyond everything," Schommer adds. "I'm sure we have a number of drivers who don't feel good or are sick on any given day that we don't know about. Unless they tell us about it, we don't know."

Schommer says his company wants to know if a driver cannot carry on in a safe way. "We want to make sure drivers are making the best decision from the safety standpoint. We don't want them to automatically take the 'I don't feel good but I want to work anyway' approach."

He says that at some point the company will tell drivers not to drive. "We'd say, 'No, we are going to require that you to go to the doctor and get a release to return to work—or we're just going to take you off of dispatch for tonight and you can tell us tomorrow how you are doing.'"

Failing to stop when you cannot go on can have health consequences as well. OOIDA's Spencer says he's known truckers who have driven hundreds of miles with broken bones just so they could make their delivery.

The bottom line is when you have to stop. Don't keep going if it is unsafe for you to do so. Keep your company informed. While the load is important, there are other considerations.