Truck Stop Visit Illustrates How Hard It Is for Truckers to Maintain Healthy Lifestyle

If you specialize in truck wreck litigation so you can do research at truck stops, you might be a redneck lawyer.

On a long car trip a couple of days ago, I stopped for caffeine at a truck stop that is part of one of the big national truck stop chains. Walking around the store area, I reconfirmed something I wrote recently about how hard it is for long-haul truck drivers to follow a healthy diet and exercise routine.

About 98% of the food and beverage items in that truck stop were high in fat, salt and calories. Adjoining the truck stop was a fast food outlet with virtually no items that you would eat if you were trying to maintain healthy weight. There were some in-cab cooking appliances that a driver could use to prepare food he brought from home, but nothing that would constitute a healthy meal. However, it is unusual to find a supermarket where fresh produce could be purchased with parking spaces for big rigs.

While truck stops often have showers and video games, I don’t think I’ve ever seen one with any exercise facilities. If a trucker wants to run on his off duty hours, consider that most truck stops are located on busy highways by freeway exits, hardly conducive environments for safe running.

A trucker who was a former professional hockey player once told me what an ordeal it is for him to find decent food and a place to exercise. For anyone less motivated than a former pro athlete, the strong tendency is to become increasingly obese and unhealthy while driving over the road. At the truck stop I visited this week, that was grossly obvious as about 90% of the truck drivers I saw were very significantly overweight. They looked like prime candidates for obstructive sleep apnea.

It would be refreshing to see one of the truck stop chains start marketing to truckers on the basis of healthy food options and availability of gym facilities along with showers.

Ken Shigley is a trial attorney in Atlanta, Georgia who has been listed as a “Super Lawyer” (Atlanta Magazine), among the “Legal Elite” (Georgia Trend Magazine), and in the Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers (Martindale), and is a Certified Civil Trial Advocate of the National Board of Trial Advocacy,. He served as chair of the Southeastern Motor Carrier Litigation Institute, is on the National Advisory Board for the Association of Interstate Trucking Lawyers of America, and is a frequent speaker at continuing legal education programs for the Interstate Trucking Litigation Group of the American Association for Justice. Mr. Shigley has extensive experience representing parties in trucking and bus accidents, products liability, catastrophic personal injury, wrongful death, brain injury, spinal cord injury and burn injury cases. Currently he is Secretary of the 40,000 member State Bar of Georgia.