National Truck Driver Appreciation Week 2026: Thank You, Truck Drivers

By Will Kremer, Agent · Last updated September 14, 2026

National Truck Driver Appreciation Week 2026 runs September 13 through September 19. It is the 38th year the American Trucking Associations has set aside a week for the 3.6 million professional drivers who move nearly everything the rest of us own, eat, and use. This year’s theme is “For the Miles You Drive and Sacrifices You Make,” and that is about as plain as it can be put.

We are an insurance agency, but we do not really think of ourselves that way. Our founder owned trucks before she ever sold a policy, and most of us have spent our careers on the phone with drivers, dispatchers, and owner-operators. Truck Driver Appreciation Week is the one week a year the whole country says out loud what we get to see every day. So this post is not about insurance. It is a thank you.

What Truck Driver Appreciation Week is

The week was started by the American Trucking Associations and is observed every September by carriers, shippers, truck stops, and state trucking associations across the country. Fleets host cookouts and hand out gifts. Truck stops run driver specials. FMCSA marks it too. The point is simple: for one week, the people who never get thanked for keeping the shelves full get thanked.

If you want the official details, the ATA runs a dedicated site at ntdaw.trucking.org with this year’s theme, downloadable graphics, and ideas for celebrating.

A few numbers worth sitting with this week

The American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) is the trucking industry’s research arm, and its work is the clearest picture anyone has of what a driver’s year actually looks like. A few findings that stuck with us:

• Drivers wait, a lot. In ATRI’s 2024 detention study, drivers reported being held at a shipper or receiver on 39.3 percent of all stops, and the average driver lost 117 to 209 hours a year to detention depending on the freight. Across the industry that added up to more than 135 million hours in a single year. (ATRI, September 2024)
• Waiting is not paid the way it should be. The same study found that while nearly 95 percent of fleets bill detention fees, fewer than half of those invoices are ever paid. The driver eats the time either way.
• The truck costs more to run every year. ATRI’s 2026 cost update put the average cost of operating a truck at $2.336 per mile in 2025, the highest in the history of the report, and noted that driver pay rose at below-inflation rates for the second year in a row. (ATRI, July 2026)
• Parking is still the daily problem. Year after year, a lack of safe truck parking sits near the top of ATRI’s industry issues survey when drivers do the ranking. Anyone who has watched a driver circle a full lot at 9 p.m. with 20 minutes left on the clock understands why.

None of that is news to a driver. It is worth repeating for everyone else, because the person in the next lane rarely knows the day the driver beside them has already had.

From our team

“The best way to show your appreciation to a truck driver is to give them extra space on the road, let them merge, let them take the exit ramp, slow down around them, and understand that driver wants to go home to see their family. Appreciate them by driving safely around them.” Eva Clair Bowles, CEO, Trucking Insurance Services

“Without truck drivers, America would grind to a halt. Shelves would be empty. Our economy would crumble. Every time I shop, I feel an immense gratefulness to the truck drivers who keep their wheels turning, day or night, sunshine or rain.” Will Kremer, Agent, Trucking Insurance Services

How to say thank you this week

You do not need a cookout or a gift card. Most of what a driver would actually appreciate costs nothing.

• If you drive a car: give the truck room. Let it merge. Do not cut in front of it at the exit and then brake. A loaded truck at 65 mph needs about 525 feet to stop, nearly two football fields, and the driver knows it even when you do not.
• If you are at a truck stop: say it. “Thanks for what you do” at the fuel island takes three seconds, and drivers remember it.
• If you load or unload trucks: get the driver in and out. Two hours saved at your dock is two hours that driver gets back, and this is the week to notice that.
• If you run a fleet: keep the home-time promise you made when you hired them. That is worth more than anything you can put in a gift bag.

Thank you, truck drivers

To every driver we insure, every driver we have ever talked to, and every driver we will never meet: thank you. For the miles, for the nights out, for the loads that got there on time when nobody was watching. The rest of us get to take that for granted because you never do.

Have a safe week out there. And if you ever need anything from us, the phone number is 855-281-2924 and a real person answers it.