Waking up at two in the morning in the darkness of a New Hampshire winter, route driver Andy Wageling heats coffee, then heads out the door to the supply depot. At three, with his step van loaded, Wageling will begin delivering SB Thomas English Muffins, Sahara bread, and bagels to dozens of stores throughout the snowbound Concord area.

Wageling is one of an army of over 400,000 delivery drivers nationwide who, in light trucks and step vans, pick up and deliver everything from snack cakes and computer parts to express packages and mail-order furniture. Popularly pegged as a sort of light-weight cousin to big-rig trucking, delivery driving is actually a trying, multi-task operation requiring enormous mental and physical stamina.

For a comparatively low wage, the American delivery driver must develop a shrewd sense of strategy, a talent for sales display and organization, smooth rapport with dozens of customers, plus the ability to defend his allotted "territory." Along with a solid understanding of proper body mechanics, career drivers must remain physically strong and fit if they are to avoid the crippling injuries that can put them out of work permanently.

Strains, sprains, and repetitive motion problems among delivery drivers are so common that, along with hospital workers, they top the list for on-the-job musculoskeletal injuries, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Unlike long-haul truckers (who unload only once at the beginning and end of a trip), route drivers spend their entire day bending and lifting, loading and unloading merchandise at every stop. The usual precautions -- bending at the knees, stopping periodically to stretch, and dividing loads into smaller parts -- are often not enough to keep a driver's neck or spine healthy.

"Drivers don't always know what they're delivering on a daily basis," says Scott Madar, the Teamsters' national director of occupational health and safety. "Packages usually aren't labeled by weight. Drivers often end up assuming something's light, when it's actually way heavier than it looks." For the average route driver, whose daily bread depends on his or her ability to lift hefty boxes, strains in the muscles, ligaments and tendons -- or injuries to joints or cartilage -- can result in costly downtime or even spell the end to a career.

While delivery drivers spend scant time on the open highway, they travel far more distance and many more hours than ordinary motorists. Dodging traffic, route drivers must stop and start constantly, entering and exiting busy streets dozens of times a day: all the while hauling heavy loads in vehicles that allow little visibility. Such factors greatly increase route drivers' risk for serious traffic accidents. Indeed, light trucks account for more than 38 percent of all vehicles involved in fatal crashes, giving them an overall risk rating just below that of passenger vehicles.

In 1999, a Federal Highway Administration study examined the high rate of accidents among light truck operators. Surprisingly, the study found that the problem was not willful carelessness among drivers, but drivers' failure to accurately judge their own levels of alertness. With daily schedules that often include pick-ups and deliveries at over a hundred stops, all according to strict deadlines, most route drivers spend their entire day trying to beat the clock -- and ignoring their own waning energy.

But the human body can't ignore the need for rest. People function according to a sort of "internal clock" known to scientists as circadian rhythms. Because of these natural ebbs and flows, an individual's energy will usually peak between 9:00 am and noon, then dip between 2:00 and 6:00 pm, when the cycle begins again. So the driver's likely to feel extreme fatigue around 4:00 pm, regardless of whether he's been on the road twelve hours, or only two. Working fatigued, he's more likely to get hurt.

Between the hassles of the road and a schedule that would tax a marathoner, package delivery can "drive the blood pressure way up," in the words of one Oakland, California, parcel delivery driver.

"You have to have a certain personality to handle it. You've got to be able to stay cool under stress," he says. Unlike big-rig truckers who spend long hours on the open road completely solo, route drivers must engage with the public all day long. "You're fielding questions and complaints, taking new requests, getting customers to sign off on pickups and deliveries," the Oakland driver says.

Money changes hands, too, and delivery drivers are often required to collect payment and even provide change upon delivery of goods. That leaves them easy prey to violent muggings. One New York City deliveryman who formerly worked for "Dial-A-Mattress" recalls that when the company blanketed local TV stations with commercials, it instantly became known that drivers carry money. Sure enough, just after the firm's advertising campaign was launched, two of his driver colleagues were assaulted and robbed.

According to the Department of Transportation Statistics, in all too many cases, the intense pressure to remain calm and perform timely deliveries has led to drug and alcohol abuse among drivers. In one study from the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, up to 25 percent of the drivers of light trucks involved in fatal accidents were found to be intoxicated.

Andy Wageling doesn't have to contend with these types of problems. But he acknowledges that it was a financial hardship to buy his route after having worked so hard as a company driver to build it up; ironically, he ended up paying much more than he would have had it been a low-paying route. Still, he is hopeful about the future. "After all, it's equity that I built myself," he says. "Me and another couple of guys, we're the trend-setters. We work hard, we push hard. We run everything to the max."

-- Diana Reiss-Koncar is a freelance health writer in Oakland, California. She has written for Hippocrates, Vibe, and the San Francisco Examiner.

References

First published January 2, 2001
Last updated March 27, 2008
Copyright © 2000 Consumer Health Interactive