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Regardless of your experience driving your truck cross-country, you might not be able to maneuver your vehicle through a natural disaster or severe storm. And breakdowns can pose their own slew of problems when you’re trying to make a deadline on your delivery. Fortunately, you don’t have to embark on your next route unprepared.
Before you put the pedal to the metal, read our emergency preparedness guide below. Here, we discuss which items you should keep stocked in your truck in case you experience or encounter any kind of emergency on the road.
Emergencies to Plan For
First, you should know exactly what kinds of emergencies you should plan for during each specific journey. Generally, though, you should prepare for the following scenarios

    Severe weather like heavy rain or snowstorms
    Flooding
    Traffic jams
    Truck breakdowns
    Wildfires
    Landslides
    Rockslides
    Tornadoes
    Road closures
    Accidents
    High winds

Many hazards will vary based on your location and the time of year. Before you hit the road, you can also check the National Weather Service or use an app to track specific weather conditions along your route.

 

Depreciation
When you buy a brand-new semi, it depreciates in value as soon as you drive it off the dealer, just as a new car does. And most of the depreciation that follows happens within the first months.
When you buy a used truck that's been "around the block" for several years, depreciation no longer becomes a real issue, making your investment in a used truck much more solid. In fact, used models hold their value as time goes on, more so than a new truck does.
This becomes a huge advantage when it comes time to sell, particularly if you have to sell soon after buying; you won't take as much of a monetary loss as you would when trying to sell a new truck.  
 

 


Trucking isn’t just a career field for men. There are more than 200,000 female “long-haul” truckers in the United States.
The average small business semi truck driver can cover over 125,000 miles per year. That is more than 3 million miles over the average trucker’s career.
In a single year, American truckers throughout the nation can travel as many as 200 billion miles. Combined, they could have trucked to the sun and back around 1,000 times.
Owner-operators are the safest truckers on the road and experience fewer crashes than anyone else in the industry. Maybe it’s because they are responsible for their own repairs?
In the United States, the average length of a semi-trailer without the cab is 53 feet, and with the cab is about 70 to 80 feet. The maximum these trucks haul is 80,000 pounds. In Australia, however, “road trains” roam the roadways. Road trains are tractors with four trailers that are capable of hauling more than 300,000 pounds!
You had better be geared up to drive the big rigs, because these babies have an average of 10 forward gears and two reverse gears. Some trucks, however, have as many as 18 gears.
It takes approximately 55 feet for a large truck to flip a U-turn. In other words, it might be a good idea to be familiar with your route and pay attention while driving the big rigs.
Approximately 1 out of every 14 American jobs are in the trucking industry. That’s equals out to about 9 million workers.