Combatting Homesickness As a Commercial Truck Driver

When you’re on the road for days or even weeks at a time on very long hauls, you can become lonely pretty easily. Even though you can chat with your fellow truckers and all the interesting people you meet on the highway, they don’t hold a candle to your loved ones at home. If you’re feeling homesick, try some of these strategies to stay connected to your friends and family while you’re working.

Be Honest About Your Feelings

First off, it’s no good to try and play tough and act like you don’t feel alone or need friends. Social isolation can be very mentally damaging, and your coworkers are more than likely to completely understand the feelings you’re having. This is especially true if you’re new to trucking: talk to a more experienced driver about how they coped with the separation when they started out. Being able to discuss your feelings openly will help you significantly.

Change Your Schedule

While this might not always be possible, you may be able to discuss your schedule with your fleet manager to figure out ways to get you home more often. You may need to take shorter trips, but this can be worth the sacrifice if you get more time with your family.

Be Creative About Staying in Touch

If you can’t fit in a phone call or Facetime chat every single day, there are other ways you can communicate with your friends and family. Maybe you make a video at the start of your day to send to them while they’re asleep so they can watch it later. Perhaps you start an Instagram account so you can post pictures of the places you go for people to comment on. You can even go old-school and write some postcards!

When you’re ready to check out an amazing selection of new and used commercial trucks for sale, you can stop by one of our 13 dealerships in four states to see what we have in stock near you. Empire Truck Sales is proud to serve Mississippi, Louisiana and Florida as your Freightliner® and Western Star® truck dealer.