Whether you’re sitting in an office all day or working construction, it’s impossible to overemphasize the importance of staying hydrated. However, when you’re a truck driver, it can be tricky to keep yourself hydrated while also staying energized and on schedule. 

But it’s not impossible and is probably far easier than you think. Truck driver safety and health are essential, so here are some tips for staying hydrated on the road that we hope will help you take care of yourself.

What’s the Importance of Staying Hydrated?

Before we get started, let’s talk about why it’s so important to stay hydrated, especially when you’re behind the wheel.

According to a study published in 2015, driving while dehydrated can lead to a “significant increase in minor driving errors.” For comparison’s sake, the study goes on to explain how drivers who aren’t properly hydrated are prone to the same kind (and number) of errors as people who are overly fatigued or have a blood alcohol content of approximately 0.08%. If you’re looking for a way to promote truck driver health and wellness, then you should start by looking at the following tips for staying hydrated.

Get a Reusable Water Bottle

One of the easiest ways to stay hydrated while driving is to keep water close by. If you have something within reach (snacks, drinks, etc.), then the odds are pretty high that you’ll reach for it. So, instead of cluttering your truck with plastic bottles (and paying for them individually), keep a good-sized water bottle with you. And whenever you empty the bottle, which should be at least a couple of times a day, make sure you fill it back up again!

Eat Food that Contains Water

If you don’t enjoy drinking water, then there are other tips for staying hydrated that you can take advantage of. For example, try eating foods that are rich in water. These include fruits and vegetables like cucumbers, celery, watermelon, strawberries, grapefruit, and the like. These make for great snacks, too, so you can stay hydrated and energized at the same time.

Don’t Rely on Energy Drinks or Caffeine

It’s not uncommon to hear that caffeinated drinks like coffee, tea, or energy drinks don’t contribute to hydration, but that’s not the whole story. While these beverages can help you stay hydrated, to a degree, they can’t replace water entirely. 

There are also plenty of ways to spruce up your water with lemons, limes, berries, or even cucumber slices. Carbonated waters are another great solution, so don’t feel confined to plain old water if you don’t want to.

Make it a Habit

There are plenty of helpful tips for staying hydrated while driving, but ultimately, they all come down to one thing: making it a habit. When you make hydration a part of your daily routine, you’ll not only be prioritizing truck driver health and wellness, but you’ll feel healthier, more energized, and better equipped to tackle whatever comes your way on the open road.

The driving conditions during the winter months are as unpredictable as they come. One day might be blue skies and clear roads, while the next is an absolute whiteout where visibility is almost nonexistent. Knowing how to handle winter driving is a must for everyone, but it’s especially crucial for truck drivers. Here are some winter trucking tips to help you stay safe on the road this season:

1) Always Check the Weather Conditions

You may not be able to predict winter weather and driving conditions (not even the meteorologists can get it right all the time!), but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take some time to look ahead and see what could be on its way.

The more warning you have that inclement weather is coming, the more time you’ll have to prepare yourself and your truck to face it. Or, if it’s going to be really bad, then you’ll have enough time to prioritize winter driving safety and make other plans.  

2) Wear the Appropriate Clothing

Trucking may not have a universal dress code, but winter trucking does have a recommended dress code. If you’re going to be participating in winter truck driving, then you’re going to need to dress for the part. This means keeping a coat and extra sets of mittens, socks, hats, gloves, and boots easily accessible in the truck.

3) Keep Your Truck in Tip-Top Shape

Before hitting the road, one of the best winter truck driving tips to follow is simply keeping your vehicle in prime condition. This means having a full tank, regularly checking your tire pressure, using chains when needed, and keeping the truck clean and visible. 

It might be a pain to clean the snow off your truck, but it will make the drive easier and safer for you and everyone you share the road with.

4) Make Sure You Have a Fully-Stocked Winter Driving Kit

When it comes to the best winter driving tips for truck drivers, there are few things more essential than having a well-stocked winter driving kit with you on the road. This “kit” can (and should!) be customized to the needs of each trip and individual driver, but should include things like:

• Blankets
• Batteries
• Chargers
• First aid kit (and pocket knife)
• Small shovel(s)
• Truck maintenance equipment (jumper cables, windshield scraper, extra washer fluid)
• Bottled water
• Some healthy snacks for truck drivers (fruits, nuts, granola, etc.)

5) Practice Winter Trucking Safety Best Practices

Winter trucking is unavoidable—especially when driving in an OTR capacity, where you’ll likely cross into all four seasons at one point or another. But with the right winter trucking tips and best practices, you can ensure that you, your truck, and everyone else on the road remains safe and well-equipped for the weather ahead of them.

For example, before hitting the road, you should check your tire tread depth, air pressure, inflation, and, when necessary, add on your trusty tire chains. And when the day comes to an end, plug in the engine block heater (if you’re driving a diesel truck) so your vehicle will be able to start back up again when morning rolls around. 

Winter driving safety isn’t just about knowing how to drive a truck in snow, though. It also means exercising these tips on a daily basis and always prioritizing safe driving practices. This means knowing the kind of environment and conditions you’ll be driving in and using the techniques that will keep you safe in them. 

Winter truck driving is just about impossible to avoid entirely. Even if you’re located in warmer weather, the odds of you encountering some level of winter weather are pretty high. This is why Lily Transportation is committed to equipping its drivers with all the skills, winter driving tips, and equipment they’ll need to thrive behind the wheel, no matter what weather they face.

Here are several of the ways we help prepare our driver for winter trucking conditions:

1) Skid Prevention

Winter is well-known for its unpredictable weather. You can have sunshine in the morning and then be in a blizzard by lunch-time. Which, as you can imagine, makes it difficult to plan ahead for the day when even the weather forecast can’t be trusted all the time. 

When you’re driving in winter weather, you must know how to handle your truck in the case of icy road conditions. Skidding is dangerous in any context and can occur as a result of wet or slippery roads, high speeds, worn tires, or heavy braking. To ensure that our drivers are prepared for anything—even skidding—as part of our truck driver safety checklist, we have a few winter truck driving tips to help them stay safe:

• Ease off on the accelerator when encountering tight turns or slick roads
• If you start to skid, turn your front wheel in the same direction the rear wheels are sliding
• Slow down gradually
• Give yourself plenty of time to brake when approaching intersections or stop signs/lights
• Keep the truck trailer straight before braking

If you ever find yourself actively skidding, then you should depress the clutch as soon as possible, look at the left mirror only, and focus on steering (and counter-steering) so you can get yourself back in front of the trailer. 

Winter truck driving can be tricky, and Lily Transportation is committed to ensuring each of our drivers is more than well-equipped for anything and everything the winter roads could throw their way.

2) Regular Winter Driving Tips

While Lily Transportation commits a lot of time and resources to fully training our drivers, we also acknowledge that there will always be new things to learn. This is why we regularly hold driver training sessions and provide literature with any new tips and tricks to keep them informed current.

Whether it’s a live broadcast on our communication television at the Lily distribution center, posted as a  simple flyer in a common area, on one of our social media accounts, handed out in a driver training meeting, or word-of-mouth shared around the watercooler, everyone at Lily is devoted to learning whatever we can whenever we can. 

Winter driving tips, in particular, are always relevant, and we never pass up an opportunity to let our team know when there’s a new tip or development they can benefit from.   

3) Providing Drivers with the Highest Quality Equipment

There are countless winter truck driving tips we can (and do) share with our drivers, but arguably the best thing anyone can do during the winter months is to have the best equipment on their side. For example, Lily’s entire fleet of vehicles is comprised of brand new and late model trucks that we continuously and meticulously maintained for maximum safety, efficiency, and comfort.

This way, we know that all of our drivers are operating vehicles that are capable of handling anything the winter season could come up with.

If you want to learn more about how Lily Transportation prepares its driver for winter driving conditions, get in touch with us today! We’d love to talk to you about our job openings, the benefits we offer, and the many ways we provide for our drivers all year long.

Safety is, and always will be, the highest priority for Lily Transportation. Whether it’s our comprehensive Driver Safety Program—which includes bonuses for drivers who demonstrate exemplary safety on the road—or our meticulously maintained equipment, everything we do is based around safety.

To help our drivers keep themselves and the people they share the road with, as safe as possible, Lily Transportation has curated a truck driver safety checklist. This ever-evolving truck driver checklist is designed with the sole goal of ensuring that safety is of the utmost importance every single day. Here are some of the truck driving safety tips and practices our truck driver safety checklist focuses on:

1) Check the Weather Conditions

Whether you’re driving a 16-wheeler cross-country or simply visiting your parents in the next town over, you should always check the weather conditions before hitting the road. Weather is infamously unpredictable, so even the most prepared drivers aren’t immune to surprise, but looking ahead is a crucial first step for any trip.

This rings especially true in the winter months, where the weather conditions can be difficult and unruly. Lily Transportation knows how tricky winter trucking can be, which is why our truck driver safety checklist and processes include safe operating practices (and training) as well as onboard safety equipment in all of our vehicles.

2) Inspect (and Clean) Your Truck

Another thing every driver should do before getting on the road is to inspect their truck. This means checking your tires (especially during the winter, where freezing temperatures can cause problems for tires that aren’t adequately inflated) and checking the truck for anything out of the ordinary. 

Are all the doors closed and latched securely? Is your battery fully charged? How does your radiator look? How about the truck’s belts and hoses? Do you have an engine block heater on hand to make sure the truck doesn’t get too cold overnight?

Every truck driver safety checklist should also involve assessing how clean your truck is. If it snowed recently, for example, then you may need to remove snow from the top of the truck, so it doesn’t come flying off on the road, causing a safety hazard for other drivers.

3) Double-Check Your Fuel

Regardless of how long (or not) your upcoming trip is, it’s always crucial to check (and then double-check) your fuel levels as part of your truck driver safety checklist. And if you’re driving into cold weather, then you’ll want to consider using blended fuel, especially when your truck uses diesel fuel, which can turn into a frozen “slush” in freezing temperatures.

To counteract this, American Trucker says, “to use winter blend fuel with a high cetane rating and add anti-gel additives at each fill-up.” 

4) Stock Up on Supplies

Making sure your truck is operating at peak efficiency and safety is one thing, but making sure that you as the driver are also being taken care of is another, equally important, thing altogether. You can have the safest truck ever, but if the driver behind the wheel isn’t prepared for the open road, then safety can take a nosedive.

This is why Lily Transportation makes it a priority to educate our drivers on the kind of supplies they’ll need to stock up on. Whether it’s snacks like fruit, nuts, and other healthy meal options, or an emergency safety kit with all the tools they’ll need, “just in case,” we’re firm believers in the age-old saying, “you can never be too careful.”

Lily not only follows safe hiring practices by running the appropriate background checks and testing, but we also take it a step further by providing consistent hands-on training to make sure all our drivers are fully-equipped with the skillsets they’ll need.

In addition, our trucks are either new or late-model vehicles (typically less than 2 years old) that are equipped with the latest safety technology in the industry including crash avoidance and lane departure in addition to Lytx Dash Cams for our entire fleet.