It’s the holiday season – a season of giving.
When you’re out shopping for your upcoming Thanksgiving meal, you’re likely to see an option to donate canned goods. Your company may run a toy drive to donate gifts to less fortunate children at Christmas. Angel Trees pop up. Shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child are packed. And soup kitchens are overrun with volunteers.
But there’s one population that is often overlooked: truck drivers.
Those canned goods and toys, they’re delivered by truckers. The Christmas gifts and holiday foods you buy from store shelves, they’re delivered by truckers. While peak season for those deliveries comes ahead of the holidays as stores prepare for a bustle of consumers, the holiday season remains stressful for truckers: cargo theft increases; there’s more traffic on the roads; and they’re away from their families during those important days of the year.
The two major reasons behind a truck driver’s depression are stress and time alone.
In America, 1.5% of the population suffers from depression, especially professional truckers with 13.6% suffering from some level of depression, according to Healthy Trucking of America. And that can increase significantly during the holidays. According to the American Psychological Association, 38% of people surveyed said their stress increased during the holiday season, which can lead to physical illness, depression, anxiety and substance misuse.
If your company volunteers or donates during the holidays, especially if you’re a trucking company or a vendor that provides products and services to trucking companies, it’s worth considering partnering with an organization that recognizes and helps truckers during the holidays.
