Developing Interior Concepts for Long-Haul Truck Driver Well-Being

Abstract

rofessional long-haul truck drivers face significant and well-documented health challenges linked to their profession, including sedentary work, irregular schedules, social isolation, and limited access to healthy food. Despite growing awareness of these challenges, the truck cab's food-related architecture has largely remained unchanged. This thesis investigates how food-related support features can be integrated into the truck cab to enhance the driver's well-being, focusing on long-haul truck drivers in Northern Europe. The thesis was conducted in collaboration with the CAB Ergonomics team at Volvo Trucks and followed a structured product development process. A pre-study combining a survey and semi-structured interviews with long-haul drivers in Sweden revealed findings that fundamentally redirected the project. Contrary to the initial hypothesis where it was believed that the limited food-preparation capabilities of the interior truck cab had a negative impact on driver well-being, drivers expressed high satisfaction with existing cab appliances. Instead, the interviews consistently surfaced a different and more fundamental need to mentally and physically separate the act of driving from the act of resting. Drivers regularly moved to the passenger seat during breaks not necessarily because it was better suited for eating, but because it provided a psychological signal that work had paused. From the pre-study, eating habits were identified as the most prominent negative factor affecting well-being, yet the barriers were largely structural due to unpredictable schedules, parking shortages, and time pressure. The primary unmet need that was identified and followed in the thesis was therefore not a richer food preparation environment but a dedicated lounge space within the cab. These insights directed the concept development toward reorganizing the cab interior rather than adding new technology. Through a structured product development process including morphological matrix generation, concept screening, and iterative evaluation with the Volvo Trucks CAB Ergonomics team, a winning concept was selected. The concept was modelled using Catia V5 and integrated into a virtual reality environment using VRED where ergonomic evaluations were performed. The final concept is an entirely new single-driver truck cab interior, consisting of a convertible rear bed configuration with an adapted dashboard preparation zone, an additional storage module, and a refrigerator in the dashboard. Together these elements create a coherent lounge and dining area physically separated from the driving position, addressing the central finding of the study. The results demonstrate that meaningful improvements to driver well-being through in-cab food-related features are achievable, and that the transition toward a cab that feels like home represents a significant competitive opportunity for Volvo Trucks.