I live in rural mid Michigan, but just off of a highway (I-69 if you must know). Lotsa mornings, as I am on my way to work, I head out on the highway, and there, on the shoulder of the entrance ramp will be one, maybe two semi trucks, engine on, lights on, but not moving.
Now, if it only happened once in a while, I’d think something like must have broken down, or whatever, but there’s trucks there maybe 4 days out of 5, usually just one, sometimes more than one. Time, anywhere from 5:15 am to 9 am.
Do they sit around and wait for their truck buddies? (sounds of Convoy in the background)
Any other theories? Any truck drivers? Sons of truck drivers? Wives of truck drivers? who would know?
They are sleeping. They leave the truck running because a desiel running at idle for a while isn’t really too expensive, plus maybe they use the power to run a heater/air condition/lights/tv. I don’t think it is illeagal nor do I think it should be since I’d rather have the trucker there sleeping than driving while sleeping.
Sigene is right, they’re sleeping. I used to be an OTR truckdriver. >>? Sons of truck drivers? Wives of truck drivers? who would know?<< PS: girls drive trucks too.
The engine is on for heat or A/C. If the truck is hauling a reefer (refrigerated trailer), it must stay on so as not to spoil the load, and it’s a separate engine. Reefers often have temp recorders in them, and must stay on at the recommended temp.
The reason trucks park on on-ramps (never off-ramps!) is either because they got really sleepy & the next truck stop/rest area is 70 miles up the road, or there’s no parking at these places. If the truck broke down, any trucker worth his-her salt will set out reflective triangles. Truckers don’t often sleep in motels.
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*Originally posted by Carina42 * Sigene is right, they’re sleeping. I used to be an OTR truckdriver. >>? Sons of truck drivers? Wives of truck drivers? who would know?<< PS: girls drive trucks too. :)[/quote I knew that, really I did. Sorry I didn’t get the whole gambit in (although the son could be the son of the mother of all truck drivers…). Thanks for the answers, too.
Yes, of course, I’d rather have them sleep than drive tired, it just never occured to me that the on ramp of a highway was a good place to pull off and do this. and why this one in particular, too (I’d never noticed the phenonmenon when I lived by the highway in the city). maybe they like the view.
wring, my guess is that if they stopped in the city, they would wake up at rush hour, whether they wanted to or not. Then they would have to merge a fifty foot long rig into rush hour traffic. I’ve only driven a bob-tail van (box van), and that was enough of a hassle during rush hour.
Those truckers you see are all required by law to keep a log book of their driving hours. “ten on, six off” or similar laws apply. When they are in the sleeper area they are fulfilling a legal requirement to get off the road for a certain number of hours so that they can stay on the road and do their job.
I saw on ‘sixty minutes’ how truckers routinely fudge their logbooks. I don’t believe it is that prevalent. A cop can give a trucker a ticket for speeding if that is represented in a fudged book, days after the fact.
My dad lost a job once because he refused to fudge the books as much as his employer insisted that he did. (They were running about 14 hours. It was a while ago.)
She was born to a mothertrucker
Raised behind the wheel
So you can blame it on the highway
For the way she can’t sit still
She says life is like a windshield
It ain’t no rearview mirror
The only way to get to where you’re going
Is to find that higher gear
And keep it rollin’…
Sorry, that’s my theme song.
To expand upon what Sigene and Carina42 were saying, it can be difficult to start a diesel engine in weather such as you would find in Michigan in January, leaving the truck running takes away the worry of restarting it.
There are construction jobs using earth moving equipment powered by mostly similar diesel engines that spend goodly sums of money to keep the rigs running continuously. One such job in Canada kept 500 plus pieces of equipment running for over 6 months. Nothing was shut down unless normal servicing required it. The primary problems were with the fuel and metallurgy at rather low temperatures. In addition to the earlier replies, outside temps often seemed to be one of the major concerns.
