Sleep is easy to overlook in trucking.
When life on the road gets busy, sleep often becomes the thing drivers try to squeeze in instead of protect. But a new national study adds to the growing body of evidence that sleep is not a side issue. It is a major health issue, and it may have more to do with longevity than many people realize.
Researchers using county-level data across the United States from 2019 to 2025 found that higher levels of insufficient sleep were associated with lower life expectancy in most states. Even after controlling for other well-known mortality risk factors, insufficient sleep remained significantly linked to lower life expectancy. In one model, only smoking showed a stronger relationship.
That should get everyone’s attention.
For an industry that depends on drivers being alert, focused, healthy and ready to safely operate commercial motor vehicles, sleep cannot be treated as an afterthought.
Sleep Is Not Just About Feeling Tired
Most people know what a bad night of sleep feels like.
You are more tired. More irritable. Less patient. Less sharp. Everything feels a little harder.
For professional drivers, those effects matter. A driver who is not well rested is not operating at full capacity. Sleep affects energy, focus, judgment, reaction time, emotional regulation, stress tolerance and the ability to recover from the demands of the job.
But sleep affects much more than how someone feels the next day.
The study points out that insufficient sleep is already known to raise the risk of cardiometabolic disease and all-cause mortality. The new finding is that this relationship also shows up clearly at the county level across the country, not just in isolated populations or controlled research settings.
In other words, this is not a niche issue.
It is a widespread public health issue. And for trucking, it is also a workforce, safety and readiness issue.
Why This Matters So Much in Trucking
Truck drivers work in one of the hardest environments possible for consistent, healthy sleep.
Schedules can be irregular. Parking can be stressful. Noise, light, temperature and unpredictable routes can all interfere with recovery. Time away from home adds mental strain. Long hours behind the wheel wear drivers down. Even when a driver wants to sleep better, the job itself can make consistent rest difficult.
That is why sleep belongs at the center of the driver health conversation.
At Project 61, sleep and recovery fall under RECHARGE, one of the 5 Axles of Health™. We talk about RECHARGE because the body and brain cannot perform well without real recovery.
Sleep affects energy.
Sleep affects focus.
Sleep affects mood.
Sleep affects stress.
Sleep affects long-term health.
And when RECHARGE is off, everything else gets harder.
One of the Strongest Predictors in the Study
One of the most striking findings in the study is that insufficient sleep remained significantly associated with lower life expectancy even when researchers controlled for other major risk factors, including physical inactivity, food insecurity, social connections, insurance status, unemployment, high school completion and smoking.
In a second model that also included obesity and diabetes, insufficient sleep still remained significant. Again, only smoking and obesity showed stronger relationships.
That matters because it suggests sleep is not just tagging along with other poor health outcomes.
It is a serious variable on its own.
For trucking, that should be a wake-up call.
The industry spends a lot of time talking about safety, operations, retention, recruiting, technology, insurance and risk. All of those conversations matter. But if drivers are chronically sleep-deprived, physically worn down and unable to recover properly, then one of the most important human factors in the entire system is being overlooked.
Sleep Health Can Be Improved
The researchers put one of the most important takeaways plainly: improving sleep health could help improve health outcomes and increase life expectancy across communities in the United States.
That does not mean sleep is easy.
Especially not in trucking.
Professional drivers cannot control every part of their day. They cannot control every load, every delay, every dock, every parking situation or every schedule disruption. But sleep is still something worth protecting and improving wherever possible.
Not perfectly.
Intentionally.
That distinction matters. The goal is not to pretend that a driver’s sleep environment is the same as someone working a predictable 9-to-5 schedule. It is not. The goal is to help drivers and fleets treat sleep as essential to health, readiness and long-term performance.
What Drivers Can Do
No one is pretending sleep is easy in this job. But small, practical improvements can still matter.
Drivers can:
- Protect their sleep window as much as possible.
- Treat sleep like a performance tool, not a luxury.
- Avoid borrowing from sleep just to gain a little more time.
- Build a simple wind-down routine, even if it is short.
- Pay attention to how their body feels when sleep starts slipping.
- Reduce caffeine late in the day when possible.
- Limit screen time before sleep when realistic.
- Get checked if they suspect sleep apnea or another sleep disorder.
Small improvements matter.
Just like with nutrition, movement and stress, consistency beats perfection.
What Fleets and Industry Leaders Should Consider
Sleep cannot be treated only as a personal responsibility.
Drivers have a role to play, but so does the industry around them.
Fleet leaders, safety teams, operations leaders and driver managers should recognize that sleep affects readiness behind the wheel. It affects how drivers feel, how they recover, how they respond to stress and how safely they operate in a demanding environment.
That does not mean fleets can control every sleep-related factor. They cannot.
But they can be more intentional.
They can reinforce that sleep matters. They can avoid treating fatigue as weakness. They can look for operational patterns that make recovery harder. They can encourage drivers to get screened for sleep disorders when appropriate. They can share practical education. They can make sleep part of the broader safety and driver health conversation.
Most importantly, they can stop treating sleep as something separate from performance.
Sleep is not just rest.
Sleep is readiness.
This Is Why RECHARGE Matters
At Project 61, we are trying to help drivers live longer, healthier lives through practical support built for life on the road.
This study is one more reminder that sleep deserves to be taken seriously.
Not someday.
Now.
Because better RECHARGE is not just about getting through tomorrow. It may have a lot to do with how many tomorrows drivers get.
The study’s authors concluded that insufficient sleep is associated with reduced life expectancy and that improving sleep health could help improve health outcomes. For an industry where driver health challenges are already significant, that conclusion should matter.
Driver health is not one issue. It is a system.
Food matters. Movement matters. Mental health matters. Preventive Maintenance matters.
Sleep matters too.
And when sleep suffers, the rest of the system feels it.
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Source: Sleep insufficiency and life expectancy at the state-county level in the United States, 2019–2025, SLEEP Advances.