My husband is employed as a long-haul truck driver. He leaves the house at 4:00 am Sunday morning and doesn’t usually get home until Friday morning.
A trucker’s wife is the trucker’s only branch for stress relief. We have to be a sponge and soak up all the overflow that they spill. Listen with open ears and refrain from judging them. When they call and say “I have a bad day,” we have to just hear them out. We shouldn’t compare and say “Well, my day was worse.”
Being gone day and night for five or six days can be very stressful for a driver. In eight days, they will work 70 hours and get 34 (one day and ten hours) off. Our average seven day week is 40 on , 48 (two days) off. When he gets ready to leave and when he’s gone, I have to put aside my feelings and emotions to be strong for him. I have to put on a front, so he will think all is okay, and he won't worry about having to be gone for days at a time.
Since he is the only person in his truck, he gets lonely and bored. On an average day, I hear from him six times. The calls will roll in about once every hour. I get a call in the morning to say hello. One at night to say goodnight. Several through out the day just to say “I love you”. These are all nice and exciting calls.
But there are the calls that make me want to scream. The ones that have all kinds of negative comments and phrases. These are the calls where I get to show just how much I love him. They’re the ones where he needs a calm, relaxing voice on the other end that will listen.
He will call me frustrated because his dispatcher changed his loads, and he has to go somewhere different then he was suppose to go. He gets annoyed because it changes his route and messes with his chances of getting home. My phone rings because a worker at his drop location refused to help him undo safety straps. He will call because someone was rude and treated him like crap because he didn't park the way they thought he should have. A call will come in that an idiotic driver just cut lanes and almost caused a wreck, making my husband need to hit his brakes harder than he should.
“Hello, just calling to say that I'm bored, I just got done driving for the night and am getting ready for bed.”
Truck drivers need to keep their minds clear. They cannot bottle up their feelings because it can cost them their jobs, or their lives, or the lives of others on the road. When listening to them talk, you have to have an open mind and heart, and understand that when they scream and yell, it is not your fault, and they are not yelling at you.
I express my love for my trucker by being the ear he can talk to when he needs one.
A trucker’s wife is the trucker’s only branch for stress relief. We have to be a sponge and soak up all the overflow that they spill. Listen with open ears and refrain from judging them. When they call and say “I have a bad day,” we have to just hear them out. We shouldn’t compare and say “Well, my day was worse.”
Being gone day and night for five or six days can be very stressful for a driver. In eight days, they will work 70 hours and get 34 (one day and ten hours) off. Our average seven day week is 40 on , 48 (two days) off. When he gets ready to leave and when he’s gone, I have to put aside my feelings and emotions to be strong for him. I have to put on a front, so he will think all is okay, and he won't worry about having to be gone for days at a time.
Since he is the only person in his truck, he gets lonely and bored. On an average day, I hear from him six times. The calls will roll in about once every hour. I get a call in the morning to say hello. One at night to say goodnight. Several through out the day just to say “I love you”. These are all nice and exciting calls.
But there are the calls that make me want to scream. The ones that have all kinds of negative comments and phrases. These are the calls where I get to show just how much I love him. They’re the ones where he needs a calm, relaxing voice on the other end that will listen.
He will call me frustrated because his dispatcher changed his loads, and he has to go somewhere different then he was suppose to go. He gets annoyed because it changes his route and messes with his chances of getting home. My phone rings because a worker at his drop location refused to help him undo safety straps. He will call because someone was rude and treated him like crap because he didn't park the way they thought he should have. A call will come in that an idiotic driver just cut lanes and almost caused a wreck, making my husband need to hit his brakes harder than he should.
“Hello, just calling to say that I'm bored, I just got done driving for the night and am getting ready for bed.”
Truck drivers need to keep their minds clear. They cannot bottle up their feelings because it can cost them their jobs, or their lives, or the lives of others on the road. When listening to them talk, you have to have an open mind and heart, and understand that when they scream and yell, it is not your fault, and they are not yelling at you.
I express my love for my trucker by being the ear he can talk to when he needs one.
I can relate to, and with the truck drivers wife my man is a Heavy Haul trucker but he is gone from 2 weeks to a month or months at a time he trained me to pilot car escort when we were friends, now we are best friends,lovers,mates, however when im not on the road with him he does the same to me he calls needing me to do something for him,he releases on me about new drivers who wont work,while he does most of the work on everyones elses truck and trailers but everyone leaves when it comes down to his, which i have seen it happen time and time again. he stays mad cause they switch trailer on him when it was agreed to stay with one trailer he fixes a trailer then they switch he get another trailer and all he does is work on that trailer. he doesnt mind helping anyone, but he cant drive 2 trucks at one time.
Now I have brought his brother home from the hospital he was just diagnoised with cancer a tumer on his kidney that has spreaded to his lungs to entire body and he is at stage 4, he had no signs of cancer in the past pulled his back and now he will never work again, I have been taking care of his brother which is my best friend, night and day but when my man calls me several times a day while he is trucking he doesnt ask how things are at home,he releases on me about his world and all I can do is keep is world peaceful for him try and calm him down, while im spending my day doing the same with his brother