Webinar Replay #65: Managing Stress and Fatigue in the Transportation Industry

Today, we’re going to talk about thriving on the road, managing stress and fatigue. Today, I definitely want to leave you with some practical strategies on on really how to manage. Behavior, health issues and mental health issues, both on the road and in office environments, so this content will definitely be geared towards transportational professionals and to a driver group as well. Little bit about me, I’ve always been fascinated with human behavior after completing my bachelors in psychology from Paravia and him university led him my first job at Compaq Computers, which is now HP. But it was then when I realized that leadership is a vital part of any organization. It’s not the what, it’s the how. And and in no particular order. I’m a family man. I enjoy spending time with my wife and kids and taking long walks with my my lab, my black lab Caleb. I I do self identify as a runner because running helped me survive the stress of working in the logistics and transportation industry. So we’ll talk more about that. I am a late bloomer on coffee. I don’t know how many. Coffee experts we have out there, but I love a good coffee. I love the the mom and pop shops, especially when I get when I have good access to Wi-Fi. And then most of all, one thing I’m passionate about, I believe that we should all find a tribe in life, people who accept us and feel the passion inside of us. And I think part of, especially if you work with the driver group, that’s what they they once they find their tried and they find what they love to do. They really excel at that point as well. And so the backup. I definitely I’ll be looking checking the chatting throughout the. The seminar as well. Yes, I got some coffee people in here as well. So yeah, I appreciate that. So I always like whenever talk about content. I’d like to make sure we set the course on what we’re going to be talking about. So so they want to leave you the better understanding of the early signs of stress and fatigue. And then I’ll give you some stress management techniques. Then I’ll show you how to create a healthy work environment, give you some key attributes around that. For starters, in the chat. Tell me if you have felt stress over the past three to six months. Give me a A why or or an and. Everyone felt stress. OK. Yeah. Stressful. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Stress is every day. I love that everyday stress. Yeah, stress is one of those in tandem. You can’t see it, but you can definitely feel it, yes. Give me this. The next one in chat tech type in the chat if you if you or someone you know is facing mental health challenges issue. Anyone face mental health challenges? When I say that like seek counseling services or. Probably had a a mental breakdown that you you’re aware of. I got some several and say yes. OK. Yes. And so part of what happens is that a lot of times in in my field and my background, we realize that I call it psychoeducation. And as Mark said earlier, it’s the stigma associated with with mental health, it’s it’s a taboo subject is is viewed as weakness and often. When we talk about. Participating in mental health services, mostly the women female population, participate in services and ironically, when you look at the driver populations, mostly male dominant. And so that’s who probably need the services the most. So without. The labor and that point before we get into the takeaways, I’m going to talk about the importance of mental health and physical health. First I I would just say Mark, you know this well, the challenges from in the transportation industry from a professional perspective and for drivers. First of all, you work long hours to regular work hours. Of course that can lead to chronic stress and fatigue. High stress environment. Tight deadlines, heavy traffic based on your pay structure, depending if you get paid by load, you get paid by your time. There’s a lot of demand demands around that and I think most of all that leads us here is that limited access to goods to food, I would say. The food and access location in areas when you’re driving. And so that’s all. That’s a perfect recipe for me for someone over a period of time to have incremental weight, weight gain consistently over say over 5 to 10 years. And then while the stress of being isolated can take its toll. And so part of what we look at is. Some of those challenges, how do you combat those challenges? And, you know, we’ve been dealing with this, mark. You can weigh in, but we’ve been looking at these challenges. For years and. I I know parking, we’ve gotten better at parking. There’s been some technology integrated into these parking locations that make it easier for drivers and take the stress out of. Parking. But when you talk about access to food and you talk about exercising, it’s only so much you can do in. A transportation environment. 

There’s also those uncontrollables like weather and of course compliance with our. 

We look. 

And and the other thing I hear very common these days, ratio is construction zones. All the delays and and unscheduled delays and uncontrollable delays and that. Clearly has an impact on anxiety. 

Yeah, big time, big time. And I’ll talk about the metroplexes because it’s compounded depending on where you locate it. When we look at the impact on physical health as well documented documented in the 2021 CDC report, they indicated that truck drivers are. At a heightened increased risk of anxiety and depression and burning. So we know that mentally that they’re predisposed just naturally by being. In the industry. When we talk about driver fatigue, when drivers are out there on the road and their fatigue, it can lead to decreased alertness, slow reaction times, higher risk of getting into accidents. And so often I think part of what we’ve done now we’ve we’ve grown to the point to where we’re using our telematics to be engaged with that that process. But I think while the road drivers are more susceptible to mental than physical physical issues, physical health issues, I think just the natural demand and. Execute deliveries can take in. So Mark, you talked about construction, I think that’s compounded when you just look at Texas, when you when you’re traveling through Dallas, Fort Worth area, when you’re coming through Austin or when you talk about San Antonio and Houston, there’s just a lot of different challenges out there uncontrollable for drivers. So let’s look at the the early signs of stress and fatigue. When we talk about the indicators and we look at indicators around stress, I’ll break that down in two areas. Looking at emotional signs. And the cognitive signs on the emotional signs around stress. We’re looking at irritability. We’re looking at mood swings, sensitive, frustrated, frustrated about small things. What that looks like is a driver that’s normally cool and laid back comes in the dispatch. And it could be something small, but they just completely just lose it completely. They just go off when they’re just really a happy go lucky laid back person. But of course, we talk about anxiety and and rest. Business, we look at depression, typically what I what I look for, especially when I had my dispatch team was drivers who typically upbeat, but they come in and they’re not interested. They just want to get their load and leave. There’s not a lot of dialogue. You can tell something is going on. They typically will stop in the office and just sit there, get a cup of coffee and hang out. But now they’re in and out, so you know that something is happening with their driver and sometimes they’re feeling overwhelmed. There’s a sense of losing control or just being able to. To to cope with what they’re dealing with. When we look at the cognitive signs, we’re looking at different difficulty concentrating, you know, focusing on tasks could be some memory loss, some memory problems, forgetting things, negative thinking, always some drivers by by default and. Love this and mark you can speak to this as well. They’re just pessimist. They just, you know, the cynicism, they just come in, they come across as negative. But that’s just how they show their love, right. But if you have that driver now, heaps no more jokes. They’re not being themselves. You figure out something’s not something’s not quite there. They’re there’s some stress that’s getting to them. And some of that stress could be not only at work, it could be dealing with something at home. I got something in the chat. Yeah, remembering drivers are human and not numbers or machines. Yeah. And so typically that’s the stress or the intangible that I’ve seen with drivers cause they they they feel like, hey, I’m just a piece of paper and you so I don’t get this load. Move. You know I’m not worthy. We had this expression. I’m only as good as my last load, right? So all it takes is one bad bad load. And now you know you. You know you’re the worst driver. You went from the top ten to at the bottom of the tow because you. Had one into that. 

Yeah. The other thing I’ve observed over the years, you don’t know what’s going on with the home life either. There’s there can clearly be some challenges there that. Uh, compound the problem. 

Yeah, especially, you know this. We’re in this season. I was very aware of. Once you get into May, June. Graduation season, right? So a driver coming in that wants to request to go to a graduation. Hey, let’s make that accommodation now. We want him to plan him, him or her to plan their schedule. But why would someone in dispatch deny someone from attending a graduation or, and let me back up the 1st grade graduation. The graduation from middle school, from elementary to middle school, from middle school to high school. Seems like these days they have a graduation all over the place, right? But I think at the at the end of the day. In our society, we’re always creating these outlets for, for parents and adults to engage with kids. But one of the challenges in the transportation industry is that we’re not as forgiving because at the end of the day. You know, we have some drivers, you know, they have a 60 hour work and 60 you know they’re they’re pushing it. And so it’s just a different album. But when we talk about fatigue, you know, we’re looking at physical signs. We’re looking at just persistent, just being tired, exhausted. They have, you know, you’re not feeling it strong. You’re feeling weak. Some people get like him. I’ve had incidents where drivers come into dispatch and they’ve had a savings. It can find that balance. So you see a lot of different things. Physically, on that side, on the behavioral side, you see increasing errors, they may miss something or may miss turning in paperwork. You may see reduced productivity they normally give you 5 to 7 loads a week. They may pull back and may give you 3 and try to just take the longest run where they can just stay out all day so. I think most of all what I’ve seen is when people start to socially withdraw, when they just look no longer engaged. Let me get my load and leave. I got some feedback in the chat. We had a lot of driving himself to do stress listening to talk, right. Yes, I I have a driver that I’ve worked with. I still talk to now and I coach him sometimes. He loves the political scene and often I try to redirect because he’s a cowboy fan and I’m the 49er. Let’s talk about the Cowboys in the 40s. Let’s talk about spoons, right? But drivers definitely get into that mode to where they’re listening to talk radio. And so they come in with this narrative based on what they’ve heard. And so that controls how they feel and the level of stress that they’re what they’re engaging in as well. It’s good feedback. So when we look at recognizing the early signs, there’s two things I think as transportation logistics professionals, we have to do a self-assessment. We have to look at. Asking ourselves, do I feel overwhelmed? Am I experiencing persistent? Being tired all the time? Do I have a rest and reset routine? Often I admire people and you’ve probably seen this. I think in the fall deer season, you know it’s time to go hunt. I had drivers that have boats, colleagues that have boats and we’re going out to the. Lake this weekend. And so we’re going to go fishing or some people love to go on vacation. So finding that balance and what I’m finding often, especially in an office environment administratively that we work just as hard as sometimes we’ll put in those 6065 hours a week. Comparable to drivers because you want to show them that you’re there for them. But. We have to find that balance. We have to seek that balance and we have to encourage our driver group to seek that balance. The observation either in the driver group or someone on your dispatch team is looking for them being notable, them making mistakes, especially in dispatch, not closing out loads. Normally, the way that you would in the past if there’s someone on the safety team not going through and doing their regular routine checking logs and things of that nature, it could be some erratic driving behavior. You know, I think part of what I love about how the industry has grown is using telematics. You can actually look at a driver pattern based on the telematics and see if they’re erratic driving around speeding or you know, harsh braking and acceleration that’s different from typically how they normally. Move the truck. And the telematics tells you a lot about driving behavior. So I, you know, utilizing those resources. So you can be. Engaged in some early warning signs and I think that’s definitely where the technology has put us, where we can leverage that to. The. The observing of driver behavior, especially when you talk about them behind the truck. I love this positive reinforcement works well, yes, whenever we could utilize this telematics for positive reinforcement as far as identifying people. And you know, no heart breaks for a period of time or no rapid accelerations. You know you can. So you can have fun with it. To recognize, always looking for different ways to recognize drivers, even even your your your dispatch team as well. So let’s talk about. And this is where we get into, Mark said, taboo taboo. But I always think about the it’s kind of like the pie in the sky because over a period of time, I’ll look at the, the hippie generation, the, you know, everyone is kind of looking at. Everything is groovy, everything is laid back, no stress and mark, you know. Isn’t I’m dating myself, but I’m not in in that area. But can you always look at being a a teenager in 1968 compared to, I don’t know, 2018, right? You know all the stress that was there. So you saw this outlet and this big movement around being mindful, relaxing, not being engaged in some of the social things that are taking place. But I think overall mindfulness is really taking. So when we look at effective stress management techniques. Those my fitness practices. Really, they pay off. They may not seem on the surface like it’s kind of like, oh, why do I want to do this? But once you get engaged with it, it really makes a difference. I think one of the benefits, there’s a lot of science behind it. I’ll talk about the science later on, but being able to shut the mind down and relax. And move away from your stress makes a difference. In the chats never see support. Yeah, we’ll talk about driver support as well. When we get into environment. So what is my fitness look like that’s paying attention, full attention to the present moment. You can have a mindfulness walk where there’s no music, you just walk and. I love this. I saw recently and you can have a mine, mine and this. A meal where you just taking the meal and taking every flavor and being. Age you can allow yourself to disappear and whatever you’re dealing with and be in the moment. Of course the the benefits is really reduce stress, improve focus. And I I think most of all it has emotional regulation. Because typically and we’ve seen this, especially my transportation professionals who have run dispatch, you’ve seen drivers come in. And they lose it. And the inability to come down, the inability to. Pull it down to where you can talk to the data and you can get to the the what you know. That’s where I was talking about from the leadership perspective. Not looking at the the what but how you approach it, but so you got to get that how down pack so you can talk about the what? When we look at the relaxation exercises. I do want to do a quick exercise and I got a visual mark and Steve here. I want you guys to relax. Put your hands on your thigh in your office and if you’re on the phone, if you’re in this session and you’re at the office, I want you to put your hands. On your thigh, I want you to. Get your shoulders. Square it up, relax. And I want you to take 5 deep breaths. Again. Read out. Let’s do it again. Deep breath. Are you there? Really. Remain. We begin. We then. This time I’m with you. So slowing down the heartbeat. Creating this. Exercise with your breast to where you can. Enjoy the moment and take your mind somewhere else. It makes a difference. I did have training trying to train drivers with this and it’s some gravitate to it, some not. But it’s it makes a difference. Being able to control your breath. Of course as a runner and when walking, especially when your heartbeat gets up to like 161 seven. You have to control your breathing rhythm right in order to continue to stay on your feet and run for two hours consistently. You have to be engaged in your breath, so that’s one good relaxation. It’s the. Guys. And then when we talk about time management tips, I I did with my team in the chat. Give me any anyone 7 habits, 7 habits, highly affected people in the chat. Anyone for me with seven habits? 

It’s. 

Yes, I love it. Yes. So what I did is you can see in my office I have the habits all around my office just to remind when I be proactive. Put First things first and so First things first is really what I call every day. You should have a P1P2P3 which is a priority one, which is something that has to get done. Today, always use the expression before the sunset. This needs to get taken care of. P2 is I I need to. It’s a party too. I need to get it done, but it’s it’ll be OK if I get it done tomorrow. Be three. It’s something that’s on my my wish list that I need to take care of. So being able to put First things first, you definitely wanna. Have a rhythm and a process for doing that, and then when you talk about making tasks manageable, I always say how do you eat it out of it? Need an elephant one bite at a time? So breaking things up. Planning it out to where today I’m going to do a little bit here. Tomorrow I’m going to take care of this and then by Friday I’ll have it all completed. So you wanna do things in chunks? That way you can take the stress out of it because all. So we feel like we just, we gotta do it all at one time. I remember driver training and especially long hauls like from here to El Paso, you know, looking at those those routes and looking at where I can feel that and looking at where I can get lodging. For the night, having that trip planned out reduces the stress mark mentioned, the traffic. Having some insight using the technology to where you can already look at red spots coming down 35 or red spots off I-10, it’s going to take you in El Paso. Right, so doing some good planning can help you reduce your stress as well. And I I think we owe it to our drivers to help educate and move them through that training process as well. 

Yeah, I was. I was just going to make a comment, you know, mindful practice relaxation. These are all soft skills that can be developed. These aren’t things you just wake up in the morning. And and and know. And I just, I know that. You know, I know there’s a lot of research and data on crashes that are related to impairment or. Speeding or lane changes. I just wonder how many crashes are due to anxiety and and the distraction of of of not being able to relax or being mindful or or being overwhelmed with time management issues. 

Yeah, you know, and so that’s where we go back to using the telematics people on their phones and you know how how how many years has it been that mark that they’ve had it to where it’s CDL serious if you get caught with a handheld device because a lot of times that that social media app. Is this helps them control their stress, right? Like if I can’t get this updated if I can’t be engaged, you know, being able to to move away from the telephone to where you’re focusing on. So just driving definitely is out there, so that how you manage your anxiety and your stress when you’re in the calf is definitely going to be. 

Of course, being a A safety director, safety management is not stress free at all, but these are things that you can clearly share with your professional commercial driving staff that I would clearly think would have an impact on truck crashes as well as retention. 

And so the fun that you mentioned it, so part of what what we do is what our employee assistance program we have the Wellness portion where we actually have a session where we come in and teach some of the breathing techniques where drivers and the management team can come in and just shut down and anticipate. That they’re just gonna be able to shut down for at least 30 minutes and breathe and relax and get into the Zen moments on that Zen space. I I think often the late Bill Walton, I don’t know if he into sports he just passed, but he is. He was into the Zen, he was into into that, that area of relaxing and he utilized that a lot in his NBA career and then post as well but. From a transportation perspective, I think companies. I want to miss her. Pull it to their drivers, but creating that educational environment to where you try something different, because if you keep trying what you’re doing now is not working. Of course, that’s the definition of insanity. But overall, you know, when you look at these soft skills is definitely something that can be developed and reinforced with the the right resources. So when we look at implementing stress stress management techniques, part of it is really coming up with a daily routine. And when I say a daily routine, I think everything starts in the morning, not unless you have a group that’s, you know, on the graveyard shift. Right. Because that’s a different beast. When people start their day. At ten, 11:00 at night, you’d be surprised from the driver perspective. They love it because there’s not a lot of traffic, don’t have to deal with it. I’d rather start my shift at 8:00 PM and finish, you know, finish that that by by 5:00 in the morning because I don’t have to deal with the traffic. I can make my deliveries. I can confirm if they take deliveries overnight and I’m good to go. But typically you want to have that morning routine, so when you start your day with few minutes of mindfulness and deep breathing, it sets the tone for what you’re going to do today, get you engaged in life, engaged in the moment. And I always encourage to journal. To start today, because once you can journal to look at, hey, what? What’s my P1 today? What’s my P2? What’s my P3? Now I can begin to orchestrate my day to where I can be productive. Then I can give more to others. So part of that prioritizing it could be related to work. It can be related to personal life. You can already look at. I got a parent teacher conference. Ohh I have a play tonight. I mean to 10 or that’s coming up Wednesday. So you’re already planning. Your day you’re planning your week so you can participate in things that matter to you that matter at work and and and from a personal perspective. We talked about taking breaks, I think over a period of time that’s really taken off. I know naturally from a dead OT perspective, drivers are mandated to take breaks, always looking at implementing water breaks and believe it or not, mark I I I am a big fan of social media breaks when it’s healthy. You know when it’s something, maybe you’re following in a podcast, and so you want to take a break and listen to your favorite podcast so you can be engaged. So you have to look at how do you break away? A from something that’s really intense, that’s stressing you out to where you can get in the environment, where you can just relax and not be overwhelmed and stressed out. And then, of course, we’ve developed some tools over a period of time when we talk about technology, there’s different apps you can use, whether the calm headspace, there’s a variety of of, of different types of technology that you can you can leverage. Even now, I would. See you when I see. Sleep I sleep with with a ocean waves because I can get into R.E.M. Sleep. I can get into a deeper level of sleep. Not being distracted by the AAC kicking on to the sand or something happening and part of the other thing is. I would teach. Drivers, we would have a session on. How do you sleep on the road? Because everyone sleeps differently. Everyone and will will know to be true. And of course, when you talk about crash and fatigue, a lot of that driver fatigue comes from lack of sleep. So you have to create this environment. We’ll talk more about that, but. Leveraging technology so you can get an adequate sleep and you can step away and engage in life as well. So the science when when we talk about mind finance, we talk about any physical activity with our body and we talk about food and things that could do that’s there’s always some some chemicals that work in my body and I just took these four neurotransmitters that our body naturally. Creates, you know, dopamine, that’s. The reward chemicals. So that’s going through your task going to your P1P2 getting everything checked off, eating good food, celebrating wins. We talked about recognizing drivers, recognizing dispatch team when look at serotonin. The mood stabilizer. So that’s meditating. That’s my running. That’s getting out in the sun. And and it’s taking a nice walk that could be swimming, could be cycling any type of physical activity, the endorphins, you know, that’s the painkiller, that’s where you get into. We’ll have to. I have to know if give me your top comedians out there. I love a good laugh. And any Richard Pryor fans out there any? George Garland, give me top comedians. Anyone out there that loves. A good laugh. And chat. If you can give me feedback and chat, give me give me something out there that makes you laugh. Tim Robbins. OK all right. Brian Reagan. All right. You know, I came up in the Eddie Murphy generation that was, you know, that was nice. Give me some other like ohh. Dave Chappelle. Ohh that’s yeah. Tim Hawkins alright. Yeah, you can’t go wrong with Eddie. That I think at the end of the day, what we realized that distraction does so Bernie Mac, that my grandkids. I love it. Yeah. Looking at, I call it young humans, right, because they’re so predictable. They bring joy and laughter to Kevin Hart self. So laughter kind of gives you that. Releases those endorphins, dark chocolate. A lot of people talk about chocolate exercising all it oxytocin when we look at the love from one that could. Me. Playing with your animal with your dog, with your cat handling, dealing with your your infants and your babies holding hands, you have our huggers out there that they every time you see him they just give you a big hug, recognizing people getting compliments. So these are natural neurotransmitters. That are in play in our body. It’s just a matter of us releasing them and doing things to make them generate those hormones in our body. And that’s a lot of the science behind what we do, especially when we talk about mental health and Wellness as well. So let’s look at creating a a healthy work environment. I am big on sleep. I actually I use an app with my Garmin that tracks my sleep. This morning I was tracking last night I tracked 6 hours of sleep. I got two hours of REM sleep, right? So my goal is to deepen that REM sleep. Because regular sleep is surface, which means that your light sleepers they wake up either you’re going to the restroom or you hear something and it throws you off at 2:00 AM and it takes you about 2:30 to go. Like you know, you have to figure out how do you develop. A good sleep schedule and a sleep routine, and even for the driver population. Even more important, mark from a safety perspective, when you talk about driver fatigue, first thing I look at is, hey, how much sleep have you been getting? Do you track your sleep from a company perspective? Do you encourage? Drivers to monitoring tractor sleep so they can be the best person that they they can be behind the wheel and that’s more kind of talking about it creating that environment where it’s OK to really talk about being fatigued because you didn’t get enough sleep because you this hotel that you normally stay at, they they normally. It’s very disruptive, so you might want to take that off the the corporate lodging. Less for drivers to stay at because you’re not getting good sleep. Do you? Do you have? Is your cab created to where you can sleep? You know, get off and sleeping when you’re on the road. Sleep is definitely one of those things that that I think that can be very disruptive. Yeah, going to bed and getting up at the same time, even on 9 birthdays. Yes. On weekends, I I try to beat the sunrise. So every night I look at. What time the sun is going to come up in the morning so I can realize how I want to schedule that that morning run and get out for the day. Of course, in Texas, I always feel like a vampire once the sun comes up, it’s natural sweat, right? So you have to be aware of that. I think one of the other the key thing is creating this environment where you have good nutrition. And physical activity. So what you see for a lot of areas in the chat give me feedback if you have a weight room or exercise room at your facility, give me a yes or no in the chat. If you have a weight room exercise facility. No, no. No, no one. OK. Yeah, I I think uh. And and Mark, I don’t know where you where you and have you been to facilities where they have this elaborate exercise room. Where they have. Weight, equipment, bikes, everything. So drivers can come in on the time off and you’re right, some terminals, the main terminal. To have it. But your satellite terminal may not have be equal. With that, but you definitely want to create an environment where you get drivers opportunities. Part of what I did for about 3 months and I want to see who utilize it. Gay drivers, access to gold’s memberships and 24 hour fitness just so they would have access on their off days where they can go in and. And be physical when we talk about nutrition, I think we’re moving to not having the regular potato chips in the break area, right, having good nutritional food available when they go into the break area and not having a lot of sodas, but good water, good drinks. That are not have high in sugar but can keep them hydrated as well. So you want to create this environment where you have. Nutritional good, nutritional items for your driver group and your dispatch team to engage in as well. When we talk about a supportive environment, that’s more about really communicating and getting in front of. You know stress and fatigue talk, having workshops, having pop ups around how to manage your stress around what driver fatigue look like. Encouraging them. Coming up with a support system as well and and part of that that’s tied to our EAP Employee Assistance program. You know part of what we do, we come in and provide a Wellness program to where initially it’s offering free counseling sessions, free coaching sessions. Free stress management sessions. And to where people feel like they can engage and they have an outlet so they can learn more and they can deal with what they’re working with. So you want to provide that support for drivers and for your work group. We we often mention that your physical health and your. Your mental health on the same spectrum, on a on the physical side, a lot of companies from medical, you get free as long as you get your, your, your, your. Annual the annual check up is free. No cost, right? So for us, we do an annual. That’s your couch time check in no cost. You’re not exhibiting any signs for my birthday. Every year I just go and get my blood going. I’m not exhibiting any physical signs, but I just get a annual check up so I can make sure everything’s working. So do the same thing with your your mental health. Once a year, scheduled visit with a a certified or licensed professional counselor and. Just have a visit and it’s nothing’s wrong and within an hour you’re good. If you feel like out of that one hour, you want to have some follow up. Hey, you have access, especially if your company has an EAP program. I think overall you just want to create a a healthy work environment to where everyone can engage and feel comfortable. And then implementing the changes, that’s the. I would say hands down because often you get from drivers. We start this, we never finish it. We started it, we never finished it, right? So implementing these changes to where they can stick. So that means that you have to measure and monitor what you’re doing as well. So those daily routines that you’re doing, maybe you. You get an app to where it tracks. With how many times you walk, it tracks your walking duration. You’re you’re running your workout because that which is measured as accomplished. So you want to create this environment where when you implement something, you can track and monitor it. When you look at work, workplace policies, flexible scheduling, and access to. To mental health resources, making sure the drivers and your dispatch team know that they have access to to different. Different resources related to their mental. 

Health. 

I’m I’m a big Star Wars fan. I love the Yoda and he always says no, try not do or do not. There is no try and so often we get into. I’m going to try this. We’re going to try this. I know do it. And then create a habit so you can be consistent with how you go about. Doing it as well. In closing, I always uh couple things that you’d be able to recognize stress and fatigue want you to create, create a plan and to understand it. And I think most of our implement implementation actually doing the work and and then closing from my perspective, I have my mantra that says. We give you. Hope, inspiration and freedom hope for a better day inspire to move forward and freedom to live your best life. That’s about it. You can stay connected with me via e-mail. Also you can connect to our website. I can put that in the chat and we have a Twitter access as well as on LinkedIn. On the Neely behavior health. All right. Any questions? 

Right. Yeah, this is Steve back. Hey. Yeah. Boy, was this a timely program for me today. I have a lot of anxiety before this program started. 

Hey, you got. 

Some of you may know I joined a little bit late thanks to having to reboot my computer and so thanks Mark for kind of stepping in for me there couple of things. And by the way, Horatio, this was it was really good information for me today. But I think it’s a topic that needs a lot more attention. You know, stress and anxiety creates a lot of problems for a lot of people. I did want to mention Horatio has helped us develop some some content that is available in our system in our catalog. It’s there. It’s called driving well, driver course. So if you want to search that in the catalog, you can find that there are 7 videos starts off with an introduction and then talks about anxiety and relationships and depression. Physical activity and stress management, personal development. That’s all in our system already. So if there are current customers here that are listening, you might want to log into that and I would highly encourage you to assign that out to your drivers. Sometimes this is a topic. Thing that people aren’t willing to just bring up and talk about. So maybe being forthright and providing some information might help people feel comfortable about doing some things that they probably need to do. Also, for those of you out there that aren’t customers, if you want to respond to my little. A poll here we could help you get access to this content and also tell you a little bit about our system and all the other quality content that we’ve got going on out there. So having said that, Horatio, I certainly appreciate your your comments today and I think the audience gained as much out of it as. 

111 more plug. One more plug. I want to make one more plug. I want to make sure I know a lot of. There’s a lot of questions with the substance abuse programs. Employee assistance. 

Did. 

Problems. That’s a reality of our industry ratio. You provide all those services, is that correct? 

Correct. Do our employee assistance program we have returning work process when when drivers are either dot that’s qualified and then trying to get reinstated. We work closely to get drivers ready. Stated, of course. Thank you, Steve. On the plug around drive well sessions and that’s really looking at the driver as a complete person and and goes back to psychoeducation in reference to not only just telling them but the the videos. Provide illustrations of what anxiety looks like and illustrations on how to deal with it. You you mentioned personal development a lot of times. You know, looking at how do you take this person just from being a driver to be interested in being a part of the safety team or be interested in being a part of the dispatch team. So. Having some career path for drivers, but overall we have 7 videos out there to support that. And yeah, most of all the EAP side it’s. It’s really taking those services beyond counseling because that’s what the stigma is that people think about something whenever they, whenever they get engaged and EAP they think ohh I gotta go to counseling. Well, no, you’re you’re looking at improving your mental Wellness. But we also have work life services. Where you could get connected to professionals that could help you either locate different services and resources and also access to professional coaching and things of that nature. So very elaborate program. 

Yeah, I think you know the content is fantastic by the way. So the videos are short, typical of our content, they’re between 5:00 and 8:00 minutes long. I I have to say I think there’s probably a a hunger for this kind of information that may be. Just we put this content out in our catalog. We were quite surprised at how quickly a lot of this was assigned out. So I think there’s there’s a need out there that we just need to put it out there for the drivers, those that may be unwilling to talk about it personally, but. Having some information provided to them might get them started to find some solution to some issues that they may be working with, so it’s very good content and I would highly encourage everybody to make sure that all their personnel company wide for that matter. Uh, get a chance to to view that content. It’s really quite good. 

Hey. Well, thanks. Thanks for having me, Mark and Steve, I appreciate. Thank you all who participated today. Thank you. Uh, thanks for having me. Really appreciate it. 

Thank you, Horatio, and thanks for everybody that joined us today and you’ll be receiving an e-mail with the link. So you can get the replay and all that. So thanks again, Horatio. And I think I’m going to see you maybe next month at one of our programs here. So thank you, Sarah, and I’ll look forward to meeting you. Person. 

Awesome. Look forward to participating in your boot camp, you guys. 

Thanks, mark. Bye. 

All right. Thank you, Steve. Thank you, Sir. Ratio. Yes, Sir. 

All right, take care.  

Guys. Bye bye bye.