Truck Driver Health: Why so many are dying young

Truck drivers face immense challenges, from unhealthy food options to sedentary lifestyles and poor sleep, leading to a significantly shorter life expectancy. Jeremy Reymer, founder of Project 61, reveals how these conditions directly contribute to alarming safety risks on the road. Learn why the trucking industry’s “operating system”—its drivers—are often overlooked, and how Project 61 is working with the FMCSA to provide free resources, education, and even explore incentives like GLP-1 drugs to foster better driver health and longevity. Discover how changing daily habits can save lives and improve the entire supply chain.

Truck drivers in the United States die at an average age of 61 — decades short of the general population’s life expectancy — and a new nonprofit called Project 61 is working to change that through free education, a mobile app, and a nascent federal partnership to incentivize healthier eating. Jeremy Reymer, who founded driver recruiting platform DriverReach before selling it last year, launched Project 61 after concluding that the industry invests heavily in safety technology while largely ignoring the health of the person behind the wheel.

“The main operating system of that truck, the driver, is an area that we just kind of look the other way when it’s so important,” Reymer said. “When you’ve got a driver who’s tired, who’s cranky, who hasn’t moved or hasn’t slept, their ability to react quickly isn’t there when they’re operating at maybe what, somewhere in the neighborhood of 30%, 40% of what they could be otherwise.”

The safety stakes are concrete. Reymer described a recurring exercise he conducts when speaking to groups of fleet owners: he asks how many have lost a driver — meaning a driver died — in the past year, and every hand in the room goes up. Medical emergencies in the cab, he noted, represent a significant and underappreciated crash risk, pointing to the ongoing litigation surrounding the Lucas Superior case, described as the largest nuclear verdict in trucking history to be paid out by an existing company, in which the driver had reportedly said he was not feeling well days before the fatal accident.

“When I’m in a group of fleets, I’ll ask this question — how many of you have lost a truck driver who works for you in the last year? And every single hand goes up. By lost, I mean they’ve died. And I say, keep your hands up, look around. This is not some isolated thing. This is happening all the time.”

Reymer identified poor nutrition as the single biggest lever available to drivers, citing three compounding factors: less than five hours of sleep per night on average, near-constant sedentary time during 11-hour driving shifts, and limited access to whole food at truck stops and travel centers. Project 61 structures its guidance around what it calls the “five axles of health” — fuel (nutrition), move (exercise), recharge (sleep), mental drive (mental health), and preventative maintenance — all tracked through a free mobile app available at project-61.org. Daily nutrition targets inside the app include three servings of protein, three servings of vegetables, two servings of fruit, whole grains, and healthy fats, along with hydration reminders.

The organization is also working with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services on a program to financially incentivize drivers to purchase healthier food options, though Reymer said details are still being developed. Truck stop operators, he added, have been supportive of Project 61’s mission, but acknowledge that healthier options go unpurchased when drivers aren’t educated on why the choices matter.

On the broader freight market, Reymer — who ran a truck driver staffing company for more than 15 years before founding DriverReach — said the industry has been “right-sizing” excess capacity that built up after a post-COVID pendulum swing brought a flood of new entrants and private equity into trucking. He described the period from roughly summer 2020 through the first quarter of 2022 as “some of the strongest environment for the demand for recruiting and hiring drivers” he had seen in a long time, followed by four years of correction. He sold DriverReach last year and has since shifted his focus full-time to driver health through the nonprofit.

• Truck drivers die at an average age of 61, and Project 61’s free mobile app targets nutrition, sleep, exercise, mental health, and preventive care to address the crisis.
• Project 61 is working with FMCSA and HHS on a program to incentivize drivers financially when they purchase healthier food, though details are still in development.
• Reymer says the post-COVID freight cycle — peaking from mid-2020 through Q1 2022 and correcting over the following four years — has largely run its course as the industry right-sizes capacity.

This Summary is generated thanks to a transcription of the interview, for the full interview please enjoy the video above.