New Driver Packing List
Getting into the routine of a new driving career can be challenging. We’d like to offer a few items for your packing list to help make your home away from home feel, well, more like...home!
Make Sure Your Digital Device is Fully Loaded
Load up your favorite podcasts, music, and digital and audio books. We have a few suggestions to make the time go by as you cruise on down the road.
Podcast Suggestions:
This American Life—An often funny, thoughtful podcast about life in America.
RadioLab—Get your science on with interesting and sometimes unusual deep dives.
The Moth—Live, unscripted stories about life in general.
Red Eye Radio—A podcast just for truck drivers making the long haul at night.
Destination Health—Want to make truck driving as healthy as you can? This is the
podcast for you!
Not much of a reader? Give audio books a try and you just might be hooked.
Newer offerings from the New York Times Best Sellers List:
The Guardians by John Grisham—Cullen Post, a lawyer and Episcopal minister, antagonizes some ruthless killers when he takes on a wrongful conviction case.
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens—In a quiet town on the North Carolina coast in 1969, a young woman who survived alone in the marsh becomes a murder suspect.
The Dutch House by Ann Patchett—a richly moving story that explores the indelible bond between two siblings, the house of their childhood, and a past that will not let them go.
If you want a break from audio, pack a favorite book for your downtime. You might crack a rib laughing at the written words of Cully Gage in his Northwoods Reader series about growing up in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
Create a playlist using your favorite music app that will offer suggestions for new artists and songs based on music you know and love. Or just enter a genre and find a station that plays from a type of music rather than specific songs.
Don’t forget the apps that help you get to where you are going. Navigation apps, fuel efficiency apps, and entertainment apps. The list is long and constantly growing, so we will let you do your own research on these.
Toiletries and Clothing
Driving from Michigan to Southern Indiana, it might not seem like you’d experience a huge change in the weather. But as the old saying goes, wait 5 minutes…
Pack layers so that you can stay comfortable in the North’s frigid weather and remove a few layers as you head south.
There are certain items you will want to keep in your truck at all times and only need to renew once a month or even a couple of times a year.
Toothbrush and dental floss—check.
Deodorant—got it.
Washcloth, a bar of soap, and a towel—done.
A box of Kleenex.
There might be a few other self care items you’ll want with you, but the basics are here.
Comforts of Home
No one needs to know if you need to have your best childhood teddy bear with you to sleep and we certainly won’t judge you for it. Certain comforts from home can make your sleeper cab the perfect place to catch some shuteye. Be sure to have a pillow that best suits how you sleep. Whether it’s thin and cotton stuffed, filled with soft down feathers, or layered with very specific types of memory foam for support, having a good pillow can make all the difference in having a restful sleep, no matter when or where that is.
The same thinking goes into a blanket. Make sure it’s the softness you prefer and the correct amount of warmth to work with your body’s internal temperature. Weighted blankets are the new thing that basically recreate a hug, relaxing you into a deep, calming sleep.
A few other items to make sleeping restorative and keep insomnia at bay are a sleep mask to keep the light out and ear plugs to help silence outside noises.
Summary
Those first few solo drives are both exciting and can feel a little lonely. We hope our suggestions will help get you started out right in your new driving career. Seasoned drivers, comment below or on our Facebook page with items you have on your trips that help give you a feeling of well being on the road.
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