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Men Who Sleep In Trucks

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Here is a very interesting short documentary talking to men who sleep in trucks and diving deep into the psychology around truck driving. It is about truckies in the UK, but if you were to do the same kind of exercise here in Australia the results would be very similar.

The film maker was clearly wanting to know about the effect of spending the week away from home and family, sleeping in a truck in a truck stop every night. However, the result seems to show there is something about the personality type which makes this kind of lifestyle acceptable, where so many other workers would be unable to cope with life away from the home.

Anyone who has spent time with long term truckies would have heard similar stories with many variations, on many occasions. The question which comes to mind is, whether the stories are the same because of the effect of staying away from home a lot, or whether the job attracts a certain personality type for whom this kind of experience is a normal occurrence.

Probably the most worrying, is the fact this is an isolated instance. There is minimal knowledge about the psychological make up of the truckie. There is also no work done to study the psychology of long distance truckies and the effect of the prolonged periods of loneliness on the psyche.

Those who have to deal with truckies on a day to day basis will be able to tell stories about the behaviours exhibited by these men who sleep in trucks and they have to deal with the issues caused by the strange world in which the truckie lives.

Schedulers, dockhands, roadside enforcement, truckstop staff will all have tales to tell about the psychological make up of the truckie, but there is not much concern about the people who live in this world. They are outsiders, as this film demonstrates. In fact, it is surprising how much information this film maker managed to get out a group of people who very rarely talk about themselves or their problems to anyone.

 

men who sleep in trucks
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