Back Up, Trucks. It's Bedtime.

If you're a fan of big vehicles, you'll love helping some sleepy service trucks find their resting spots for the night. Climb into bed, put on your safety hat, and take a bedtime journey with a dump truck, garbage truck, reycling truck and fire engine in this peaceful, sleep inducing tale.

Transcript

Welcome to Bedtime!

I hope you had a good day and I wonder if you saw any service vehicles today?

Any construction vehicles?

Or trains?

Or planes?

Or buses?

Tonight,

Let's imagine that your bed is the cab of your favorite service vehicle.

Imagine that as you climb into your bed,

You're climbing into the cab of this truck or bus or whatever you decide.

Now you are in the driver's seat.

Notice how comfortable your body feels in your vehicle.

Your legs and hips feel supported and relaxed and oh so happy.

Your arms and head and neck feel relaxed and happy too.

You take a deep breath and as you let it out,

You wiggle your body and get even more comfortable.

Imagine that sitting next to you on your pillow is a safety hat and folded up next to the safety hat is a safety vest.

You reach for the hat and put it on.

You notice how perfectly it fits your head.

As it slides on snugly,

You feel a gentle pressure on the front of your forehead and just above your ears and at the back of your head as this hat protects you in a comfortable way.

The weight of the hat resting gently on your head makes you feel just the right amount of warm and safe.

Now you reach for the safety vest.

As you pull on the vest and zip up the front,

You feel like the vest is giving you a hug.

The reflective material sparkles and shines and as you move your body,

It feels happy inside this vest.

Now you notice down at the bottom of your bed,

There's a pair of work boots and they are exactly the right size for your feet.

You slide your feet in one at a time and feel a comfortable thunk as your foot fits right in.

These boots are soft on the inside and tough on the outside and your feet feel just the right temperature.

They are such comfortable boots that you could fall asleep in them.

But before you fall asleep,

Let's imagine a story together about service vehicles.

Click on your sleep belt,

Here we go.

As you lie in your bed in your safety hat,

Safety vest and boots,

You wonder what vehicle might need your help.

As you wonder,

You hear a gentle sound outside your window.

It's the distant beeping of a truck in reverse.

You peek outside your window and look down your street to where a dump truck has just parked.

You notice its huge wheels,

Its bright yellow cab and its flashing hazard lights.

You hear a gentle hum of the engine.

This dump truck is still running.

It looks like it has had a long day of transporting dirt and rocks to a construction site.

You imagine that this dump truck is pretty tired out from a big day,

But it has no driver.

How will it find its nighttime parking spot at the construction site?

You decide that you will drive this truck to its resting spot so that it can be ready for more construction work tomorrow.

Magically,

You transport from your imaginary bed driver's seat to the real driver's seat of this dump truck.

You feel very comfortable right there by the steering wheel.

Even though you are small,

You can reach the pedals and the levers and see out the windshield.

You check to see if your safety hat,

Safety vest and boots are still on and they are.

So you take a deep breath and get ready to roll.

You release the emergency brake and step on the gas.

With a rumble,

The dump truck chugs out into the street and you steer it toward the construction site.

The deep sound of the engine shakes your body a little bit and you can feel it relaxing your muscles as you drive on down the road.

When you get to the construction site,

You can see a parking spot that looks like it's just for this dump truck.

Slowly,

Slowly,

You back the dump truck up with a smile on your face and you know that you have done a good and helpful thing.

You say good night to the dump truck.

It's night time for all and in the morning,

The engines will rev up again to get the job done.

As you wonder how you might get home again,

You look across the street and see a garbage truck idling by the curb and it is full of trash.

It has been driving all around the city,

Keeping the city clean.

Before this truck can rest for the night,

It needs to unload its trash.

So you decide to climb up in the cab and settle into the seat.

You sit behind the steering wheel.

You notice that you still have your safety hat,

Your safety vest and boots.

They feel so comfortable and you take a happy deep breath.

You are excited to drive another big truck.

As you look at the instrument panel,

You see the joystick that raises the front and side arms.

You try out the joystick and watch while the garbage truck stretches its arms long,

Kind of like a person stretching out in a big yawn before bed.

You see the toggle buttons that will eventually drop the rear gate and let you dump out the trash.

But first you have to drive to the sanitation center.

So you carefully check all the mirrors and then pull out into the dark nighttime street,

Heading toward the garbage truck's special parking spot.

The rumble of the garbage truck feels a bit different than the rumble of the dump truck,

But big engines have a way of making you feel powerful and relaxed at the same time.

As you enter the gate at the sanitation station,

You swing your truck around and back carefully up to the garbage chute.

With the toggle buttons on the dash,

You begin the process of dropping the lower gate and ejecting the compressed trash from the day.

Swoosh,

Crash,

Job,

Done.

You pull forward to the parking lot and then back this garbage truck into its parking spot,

Rolling it slowly to a stop.

That was so exciting!

And you feel good being part of the service truck team.

You know it's getting late,

But as you look around,

You hope to see another truck that might need a bedtime park.

And sure enough,

Next door to the sanitation station is the city recycling center.

And the trucks next door are all recycling trucks.

You wander past them all in a row and see that one is still running with its lights on.

You feel confident that you can park this truck with no trouble at all.

But as you walk along the compression body and past the sidearm to the cab,

You notice how dirty the recycling truck is.

It must have had a muddy kind of day.

Before you park it,

You decide to drive it through the automatic truck wash for a bedtime bath.

With your hard hat,

Your safety vest,

And your boots still snug on your body,

You climb into the cab and shift the truck into gear.

It rolls slowly over to the truck wash and you hop out to the truck wash control box.

You press the green button and hear the hoses begin to whoosh out water.

You climb back in to drive the truck,

Carefully steering through the washing tunnel as the water and soap make a rhythmic swooshing sound all around you.

You drive nice and slowly so all the parts of the truck can get nice and clean.

As the recycling truck rolls out of the wash,

It sparkles in the moonlight and you slowly back it into its parking spot.

The workers will be so happy and surprised to see a brand new sparkling clean truck when the sun comes up tomorrow.

You can feel your mind getting sleepy and your body getting tired.

As you wonder how you'll get back home to your bed,

You hear a siren off in the distance.

It sounds like it's coming nearer and as you walk out to the curb you see a fire truck speeding toward you.

You love the sound and the lights and it's exciting to watch such a big truck driving toward you.

You are very surprised when it stops right in front of you.

A firefighter leans out and reports that they are on the way to an emergency and asks you if you could hop on.

They need one more assistant firefighter engineer to help with the aerial ladder.

You say yes.

You climb aboard into the passenger compartment.

The firefighters take you to a large tree behind the library.

Up in the tree you see the library cat balanced out on a very high branch.

The firefighters ask you to extend the aerial ladder to its very end point of 105 feet so that they can rescue the cat.

You move to the control panel and notice that it has two joysticks.

First you carefully use the joystick that extends the outrigger legs to stabilize the truck.

And then you press the ladder joystick to the extend position and watch it reach up and up and up.

The fire chief climbs up and rescues the cat and everyone comes down safely.

The firefighters hop back into the cab of the truck and they give you a high five and then they hand you the library cat.

You hold her on your lap and comfort her with soft pats.

This was such an exciting ride and you are tired out.

The library cat begins purring on your lap and you feel soft and melty as you rumble down the road.

The firefighters are delivering you right back to your house.

As you magically find yourself back in your comfortable bed,

You wave at the firefighters and they roll their truck back to the fire station.

You feel very happy to have been helpful on this night.

You know how much work the service truck people do every day and you appreciate how they help to take care of your town.

You feel sleepy and warm and happy as you tuck into your bed.

As you drift to sleep,

Your body remembers the feel of the rumbling engine,

The comfortable seats and your safety hat,

Safety vest and boots.

You can still hear the familiar beep beep of each vehicle as it backs into its resting spot for the night.

Reviews

Perfect timing. Thank you for sharing this story 😇

This just put me and my 3yo right to sleep. Thank you for this. How fun!

My daughter fell asleep in 10 minutes. Loves this. Who would have thought a story about work trucks would be relaxing!

We love it more each time we use it, and my 4 year old has never once stayed awake till the end. Thanks!