They often spend 15 hours behind the wheel and then have to sleep in their truck at night. For a truck driver, the evening meal in the roadhouse is often the only moment of relaxation. But since Thursday the roadside restaurants are no longer allowed to serve meals inside. And so the drivers now get their food served in the truck.
According to Jurrian Visscher, owner of the Roadrunner roadside restaurant in Dalfsen, this is “inhumane”. Together with Sandra van Schaeren from the big truck stop in Malden, he sent an urgent letter to Minister Cora van Nieuwenhuizen of Infrastructure to request exemption for the drivers.
“Truck drivers have a vital profession. They spend hours behind the wheel and we must therefore offer them the opportunity to relax at the table, of course with a distance of one and a half meters,” says Van Schaeren. She thinks it is unfair that hotels are still allowed to offer their guests meals in the restaurant.
The truckers themselves are also very sorry that they are no longer allowed to enter the roadside restaurant. You sit alone in the cabin, they miss the pleasant conversations with their colleagues:
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‘You miss the conversations with colleagues, a bit of fun’
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“We have almost nowhere to go to rest or go to the toilet. If you also have to eat in the truck for months, that is no fun,” says a trucker who, like thousands of others, has to spend the night during the week. at one of the roadside restaurants. Drivers are bound by legal driving and rest times.
Visscher of Roadrunner thinks it is a big problem that drivers no longer get out of the truck at all because of the measures. “For us it is actually more profitable if we bring the food to the drivers in the car, but I find it humiliating that they no longer have any form of relaxation.”
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Where can truckers still go to the toilet?
The fact that truckers can no longer eat in the roadside restaurants is annoying, but not the biggest problem, says Elisabeth Post, chairman of the Transport and Logistics Netherlands trade association. With the closure of the restaurants, the sanitary facilities have also been closed, which, according to her, creates difficult situations for the drivers.
“Sometimes the drivers can still go to a petrol station for the toilet, but that is not always possible,” says Post. “In addition, we also notice that drivers are not allowed to go to the toilet at the point where they have to load and unload. Companies then say: only for our own staff, not for third parties.”
Minister van Nieuwenhuizen therefore calls on roadside restaurants and petrol stations to keep their sanitary facilities open for drivers. “They do an enormously important work. It is important that they have the facilities they need to continue to do their work in a responsible manner,” the minister said. News hour.
Nevertheless, the minister does not think it necessary to make an exception for truckers so that they can eat their hot meal in the roadside restaurants. “Within the applicable measures, it remains possible to offer take-away meals. In this way it remains possible for drivers to get a meal along the road. An exception is therefore not under consideration.”
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