Occupational Health and Safety in the Trucking Industry – Current Trends and Future Challenges

Abstract

Professional truck drivers face various kinds of challenges during their workday. A high prevalence of work-related musculoskeletal disorders and high accident rates are associated with the trucking industry. In addition, various differ- ent psychosocial stressors affect truck drivers’ work ability. Accidents, disorders, and stressors all affect working careers. There is both a constant need for a skilled new workforce, but also a need for prolonging working careers. Some characteristics can be identified on truck drivers’ work; the drivers mainly work alone and their work contains static work postures while sitting and physical activities while working outside the cab. While working, the driver often faces opportunities for unethical and unsafe actions to ease the workload. This poses challenges to the occupational health and safety (OHS) management. This article provides a scoping review of the risks and hazards that the professional truck drivers face while working. Both driving and non-driving work activities are covered. Special attention is paid to selected new modes of transportation and a discussion is held on the possible OHS challenges that they may bring along. High capacity transports (HCT) are discussed as an emerging mode of road transportation that enables larger loads to be freighted and intermodal transportations (IMT) are used increase the efficiency of the transportations by combining different transportation modes. However, very little attention is being paid in the current OHS literature on the possible adverse OHS effects concerning the driver.