Truck Drivers: Make Life on the Road More like Home

Life on the road can be hard on a truck driver. Away from home for maybe weeks at a time, living out of a duffel bag, eating in restaurants for every meal, poor sleeping habits, this will make your life miserable. Here’s a few ideas that may help you maintain your sanity, and make your rolling condo feel a little more like home.

All that heavy food at restaurants, some places are good, while others leave you just feeling nauseous. The old standby order a hot beef sandwich, chosen only because it’s pretty darn hard to screw up that order. Sliced roast beef, bread, gravy and mashed potatoes, definitely not rocket science. Wouldn’t it be nice to have some home cooked meals right there in the comfort of your condo style sleeper?

Food Storage:

Many trucks come from the factory with mini refrigerators already installed. If yours isn’t one of them you have three options:

Poor: A cooler with ice, it’s good for about 24 hrs. You do have the option of buying more ice, but that’ll get old quick.

Better: A 12 volt electric cooler. These things are great, they do a nice job of maintaining food at a safe temperature. You can stock up a couple days of leftovers from home in Tupperware containers and avoid spending all your money at buffets that keep the same food under heat lamps all day. Be sure to shop around, oddly enough the best prices can be found at some truck stops.

Best: Visit your local RV dealer, they can install a gas/electric refrigerator in your rig. It’s a bit expensive, as you’ll need a source of propane as well. For a small unit with propane tank it will cost you at least $1,000, with labor probably more. Another option would be a gas portable freezer, you can find them listed in Camping World’s catalog. www.campingworld.com

Food Preparation:

Nothing beats a hot home cooked meal, be it reheated from home, or cooked from scratch.

Poor: That electric cooler you just bought, if you turn the plug around it will maintain or heat food to eating temperature. It does a good job, but if you are using your cooler for heating, where are you going to put your pop to keep it cold? In heat mode they don’t get hot enough to cook food, they can only warm food.

Better: Also available at most major truck stops is a small 12volt oven. About the size of a small lunch box, it does an excellent job of actually cooking food. A small roast, pork ribs, even beans and franks. Imagine after cruising down the road for a couple hours, when you pull into a wayside rest for a break. The smell of pot roast with baby carrots and new potatoes drifts forward from the sleeper of your truck. Yes these little ovens are that good. It’s wise to line it with tin foil to make cleanup easier. Form the tin foil into a small container and you can throw it away when your done.

Best: A microwave is your best option. By installing a voltage inverter of a large enough size to handle a microwave, you can have a good hot meal in a matter of minutes. This won’t cost you a fortune either. A 1500 watt inverter (changes 12vdc to 110vac) will probably cost you a couple hundred dollars. And a microwave is as cheap as $39.95. You’ll find plenty of use for that inverter besides cooking, nothing like having 110ac available when making repairs on the truck. If you want to make a good breakfast, a portable hot plate and frying pan will be the ticket for your next batch of eggs and bacon. A little popcorn at the next rest stop?

Sleeping:

Without a good nights sleep your a hazard on the road. A good comfortable bed is a must.

Poor: The original mattress in some trucks can be as bad as sleeping on a kindergarten sleeping mat, not much cushion to them. One inexpensive improvement would be to add a layer of egg shell style mattress pad. As cheap as $10, they will help a little.

Better: To add a bit more cushion you can use a partially inflated air mattress. Again this may help some, but won’t be ideal by any means. Putting at least one layer of heavy blanket between you and the air mattress will help it stay in place.

Best: Available at Sam’s Club is a dense mattress pad, about 3-4″ thick. They have single, full, and queen size available, with the queen size being about $130. If you put it on top of the existing mattress you may find the total package to soft, and it will be hard to get out of bed or roll over to a different position. Try it with only the pad, take the original mattress completely out. The 3-4″ dense pad will give you better support and will be plenty comfortable on it’s own.

Entertainment:

Time to kick back and relax, how about a movie before you call it a night.

Poor: That radio on the dash, blaring country music all day long is fine, but to unwind in your off time a TV is the ticket. If your constrained by only having 12vdc, you’ll be limited to about a 9″ model.

Better: With that inverter you bought for the microwave you can now run a 19″ with remote control, just like at home. Your only restriction will be finding a place to mount it. Don’t forget a VCR or DVD, good to have some movies for the times you can’t find a TV station.

Best: If you really want the best, you can get a roof mounted satellite dish that will automatically find a signal. Don’t forget to install surround sound to go with it, and you might as well go with a flat screen HD television.

Personal Hygiene:

Brush your teeth, shave, staying clean not only helps you feel good, it gives you a professional appearance.

Poor: At a minimum carry a jug of water, bar of soap, wash cloth and towel. You’ll be amazed how much better you feel after just washing your hands and face. If you carry a good sized bowl you can use the microwave to heat up the water and get a quick shave and wash the particulars as well.

Better: A small cabinet can be built with a small sink in it. With a hand pump to bring up fresh water into the sink. Under the sink you can have two containers. One for fresh and one for dirty water. 5 gallon plastic jugs of similar dimensions to the old military gas can is a convenient shape to use when you construct such a cabinet. You can still use the microwave to heat hot water to add to the cold you pump into the sink. Attaching a mirror behind the sink will be helpful too.

Best: Another trip to the RV dealer, they can install a 6 gallon water heater, again propane will be needed. Plus a water pump, fresh and gray water tanks, etc. Not the most practical solution for a standard condo sleeper, but it is an option. Many dollars will be needed too.

Additional Convenience Items:

Sitting on the bed may be comfortable enough, but without a table to eat at or do paper work it can be a pain. A good quality folding TV tray will be easy to tuck away, yet big enough to make eating or writing convenient.

A cloth sack with draw string is an excellent way to handle dirty laundry. Clean clothes take up less space when you roll them up. Rolling will help eliminate wrinkles as well. You can have a neat stack of rolled clothes tucked into a shelf cubby hole, or a small suitcase.

Depending on the size of your condo sleeper, and how it’s constructed, to have the ability to fold the bed up out of the way might be nice. Maybe building a dinette that will drop down into a bed would better suit your needs. Or building some overhead storage in place of the upper bunk. The ideas are limitless, hopefully this article has given you some ideas to start on.