Hours without sleep

[Beast]

Used to work graveyards in my early 20s, so being awake from Friday afternoon to Monday morning was a semi-regular occurrence.
Shit gets fucking weird around 50 hours awake.


Took a load of NaHS up to a mill when I was running tankers, 14 hour drive, followed by a ~32hr live unload I had to babysit. That was fun. Had to take 10 off after, by that point I was damn near flying. Middle of winter, northern BC, -25°C. The nice flat expanse of snow beside the plowed parking lot, with absolutely no tire tracks in it looked like the ideal spot to have a snooze.

Buried a set of SuperBs past the hubs, and more or less froze myself into place.
Loaderman was less than impressed with me the next day.

 

[Gtrplyr78]

Oilfield will give a good run to the military, for sure.

In my 20s we used to binge for 3 days straight, sleep it off and rinse and repeat.

My mid thirties a friend and I tested cell towers for ATT (2014), our typical week was 3500 miles or more driven, plenty of 24hr plus shifts. Work started at night (less network traffic), and we would work through the night following day.
I remember one day we drove out to Vernal (from SLC), got our rooms and went about testing. Equipment broke down, we drove back to SLC and got the replacement kit - turned around and drove back to Vernal only to resume testing... No sleep, no rest.

As of recent running hard with expedite freight and a 36' box truck, some come to mind:

Loaded later in the afternoon Tuesday in Frenchtown, MT and was onsite at a nuclear powerplant in Braceville, IL Wednesday night. 1760 miles or so.

Ran Silver Springs, NV to Janesville, IA in 30hrs all in. Also had a like 2pm start haha...

Picked up a load from Toshiba in Houston, TX on Thursday afternoon and was sleeping in my own bed late Friday night / early Saturday morning, Sunday I resumed my trip over to Umatilla, OR. Slept nearby for Monday early AM delivery...

I kept detailed logs of all the trips, sort of to keep them honest and shit to reference to later on when some mouthbreather tells me how its an easy job.

In addition to driving lots of those loads also required load assist/unload via pallet jack etc.

 

[arse_sidewards]

I've gone probably 3 days / 72 hours no sleep.

Two nights skipped was my record too. Thankfully I didn't need to drive anywhere the last day. Lots of hallucinations in your peripheral vision starting the second morning without sleep.

Sitting at a desk or driving, I'm ready for a snooze after about 8 minutes. But physical, non-repetitive labour - I used to be like one of those soldiers from the X-files episode who hadn't slept since Vietnam.

Exactly. I can barely stay awake after missing a night if I'm at my desk or behind the wheel but if I'm doing stuff it's real easy to just keep doing stuff. Back in my early 20s I'd regularly skip sleep to make an overnight drive and then work the next day like nothing happened.

You fuckers aint staying up 50 plus hours without drugs tweaking your balls off. Quit lying.

You have inferior genetics.

 

[speed bump]

I've blocked it from my memory. I started in the oilfield running MWD tools with zero schedule. Drive 8-12 hours, rig up hopefully in less than 24 hours, and hope to hell the brand new trainee they sent you could take a survey after a couple hours or run single man for a 5 days of vertical. Otherwise you slept in a chair as much as you could and hoped nothing we t wrong

 

[Microtus]

About an hour of broken sleep is all I got. Flight out this morning is delayed. If I wait for it then im.stranded in Minneapolis. My wife is driving down to pick me up. Fuck airports.

 

[AKnate]

No you're not .

Decentish?

Worst for me is early morning shifts.

Id much rather work like 0800 to 2000 than 0600 to 1800.

 

[RusM]

36 is/was not uncommon, over 42 hours and I start being useless.

This, used to be pretty routine in the ambulance, take a half shift of OT and you'd be guaranteed to be awake the whole time running your ass off.

 

[VG SERE]

I've bone probably 3 days / 72 hours no sleep.

NOW Though... Like within the past month ... when insomnia hits, and it's 3:30 AM and I can't sleep it triggers a weird panic attack. Like a legit panic attack where your brain tells you you're going to die. I can talk myself off the ledge, take some breaths and somewhat recover, but it's strange and kinda scary. I give it 0 out of 5 stars... Would NOT recommend.

This same shit started happening to me back in Sept. Freaked me the hell out. Thought maybe due to my sleep apnea? I can deal with it now, but it's a struggle some nights. Full fight or flight activated. No clue why.

 

[Thatg9659]

Computer cloud bullshit rescheduled my appointment. 7am call told me as I shut it down with 70 miles to go. I don’t even have to be here today.

 

[MuntCuffin]

42 hours, planting beans in the cab of a jd 8630.

If you keep me up over 20 hours, you better have me doing something repetitive and engaging, but low effort. Doing mechanic work or fab at that level of exhaustion and I WILL fuck something up.

But I can run a tractor for days on end.

Fell asleep at the wheel after a 37 hour harvest marathon half off the road in a farm truck. Something about a 6.0 chugging along at 55 just lulls you right to sleep. Had a belly full of country fried steak and eggs, so that didn't help.