Carbon monoxide alarm

YES! YES! YES! This is a very important piece of safety equipment. Worse than death is the cognitive and neurological damage that can happen when you are slowly poisoned over time.

 

do you recommend a particular brand whats the price range on these things

 

I don't have any particular recommendations. The big price differences mainly have to do with the different features, like tracking of Co levels, built in clocks, etc.

 

Shop around for a better deal. $50.00 is about double what they should be. This weekend I was wandering around a local store (bi-mart) and they had 3 brands under $30.00, the cheapest was around $16.00. Man .... 50.00!!? Where were you? A truck stop?

 

You better believe you should carry one. You'll be living in a truck for weeks on end, and your apartment-on-wheels is sitting only a couple of feet behind a huge fossil-fuel burning device with no real protection for the nasty #### that device produces. A truck driver would be stupid to drive a truck without a CO detector.

I'd carry two--one in the cab and one in the bunk. There are stories out there on the net about people who've been poisoned by CO while driving rigs. Many of those cases involved drivers who drove the early 2000s Freightliner Century trucks. EGR valve problems were usually the culprit. In one case in Florida, a guy is now sitting in a wheelchair because of CO-induced neurological damage.

I wouldn't even start up a truck today without a CO detector in the cab. I used Black and Decker RV detectors when I drove. Those are pretty good, as they're very sensitive. They're also small and will sit where you put them (usually).

 

Good, glad to see that someone else is as adamant as I am about the need for those.

 

The poisoning happens so slowly, and the symptoms are so innocuous, that you don't realize that it is happening. Until you have a permanent disability or you are dead.

 

I can't prove it, but I suspect I got a nasty dose of CO while driving during the summer of 2001. That rig was an FLD 120 with a Cummins N-14, and it was leaking a small amount of exhaust at the turbo charger. I felt some of the symptoms, but not that much. Mostly I had headaches. I never felt light in the chest, nor did I have pink hands. I did have short-term memory problems and slurred speech for a few hours one day, which is when I finally broke down and had it checked.

I never went to see a doctor, so I have no proof. No, I can't sue anybody over it. Even if I could, the ratty company would appeal and/or file for bankruptcy. I wouldn't see a dime, I'm sure. Shoulda had a detector on board at all times. Too bad my expensive trucking school didn't give me the heads-up on this problem. Diesels DO produce carbon monoxide. Don't believe the idiots who tell you otherwise. Many of those guys are idiots because they've lost so many brain cells to CO sneaking into their cabs.

Funny thing was...I soon quit this company and went to Crete. I felt some of the same symptoms when I drove a Crete truck, and I know that thing wasn't leaking CO. Neither of my two detectors ever went off, and I regularly tested those by running a car in a closed garage for about 5 seconds while the detectors sniffed away. It took them 10-15 seconds after the car was shut off to start chirping. They worked. Black and Decker makes good CO detectors.