Adventures of a Flatbedder at Roehl

rumor has it...(yeah rumor from truckers i know) that they might be putting tripacs on the new trucks in the future....(I will believe it when I see it)...

but after a couple fits (that I fixed my self) my Battery Pac holds up pretty good....so far I am happy with my cascadia..

 

Saw a new prostar with a apu today.

 

I know roehl is trying to save money, but when the batterys go dead on the battery powered apu, guys are going to be idling the truck to stay comfortable.

wait till it gets good and hot and that will be a true test for the battery powered apu's.

 

They are lucky the winter has been mild for the most part...cause cold will destroy batteries like nothing else...heat isn't so bad..but once that good ol' florida/Georgia summer heat hits with that humidity you can guarantee that those batteries are going to get a work out with the A/C running.....
found out something kinda cool that I really like about the cascadias ESPAR heater...with the rain in memphis tonight I have a fogging issue on my windshield...well when I turn the key to accessory and run the defrost the espar heats and circulates the coolent so my defrost works without the truck running...plus on the cold days the Espar keeps the truck warmer than that webasto I had in my columbia...

 

My batteries have been holding up well. I ran the heater with the fan on two and the heat cranked to HOT and it ran for over 15 hours last weekend with no issues. It is nice to have heat immediately when you start your truck to start driving also. The apu circulating the coolant is actually a very smart feature. So, I'm pretty happy with my new cascadia also.

 

We've been running those for a few years, and have had very few issues with them in extreme temps. I woudln't worry too much.

 

from what I have been reading...the battery APU's do not use standard truck battery....its sometype of glass or gel if I remember right they hold up longer than the standard vehicle battery..

 

The manual says it's a "glass mat" battery. It says it runs off both the regular truck batteries and the deep cycle batteries, then when the regular batteries drop below a certain voltage, it switches to just the deep cycle batteries. I havn't had the regular batteries cut out yet, but we will see what happens when the compressor has to run in the summer.

 

you guys with the cascadias how is the MPG'S with the dd-15 engine, I got to run a 2012 prostar for a couple weeks and was amazed at the mpg's compared to the 07 columbias. But Im glad to be back in the 07 columbia more room than the baby 8 and a tri-pac.