Truck With No APU

So real ####, if you get a long enough extension cord, you can run it underneath the cab to a preformed entry point like @Qbf594 did (trust me, that's a pre-existing hole. They did NOT cut that). There should be a few around the cab. As far as securing the cable goes, just zip tie it to one of the other bundles of wires and/or air lines that are already run there by the manufacturer.

Alternatively, if you don't care about looks, you can just run it in through your sidebox and out your bunk in the sleeper, then close the sidebox door on it. That's definitely a trick I used when I was running on a dedicated account that saw me back to the same yard every night, but said yard had a no-idle policy and provided electrical hookups in the bobtail parking area to make up for it

 

I could charge everything whether the truck idles or not. If the battery starts running low the truck should turn on and charge the battery back.

If battery juice isn't an issue it should only turn on to maintain a certain temperature that I've set in my cab. Except that never worked. If it saw outside was a certain temperature, it would just never turn on, thinking that I would just roll my windows down and stay cool. Yeah, I'm going to sleep with my windows rolled down in inner city Memphis. lol. My body can heat up a cab to 90 pretty fast, especially with a co driver on the top bunk.

I had a partner that liked playing on his XBOX, and it would shut off once the truck did. If you are looking to run a TV/game system, You can either clip the grounding wire to the outside sensor and deal with the repercussions if your company finds out, or go with a company that has an APU.

Otherwise you can do what I normally do and just watch movies on a tablet that's using your cellphone as a hotspot.

 

This is Western Express we're talking about. The very same company that didn't bat an eye at drivers literally ripping parts off their trucks and replacing them in the yard when I was there. I don't think they're going to complain about OP wiring up the truck to play some vidya games on his downtime

 

If that's the case, I know in the Freightliners there's a grounding wire you can cut to the outside sensor that will disable the idling system so it will just idle all night, and the OP can sleep comfortably.

I don't bring game systems with me on the truck, but my truck wasn't idling correctly at all and I was losing sleep. After multiple failed repair attempts I took that measure and haven't had an issue since.

 

That's good! You got luckier than me. They were never able to completely fix my issue. The first half of this summer was hell, that's all I gotta say. But it's working fine now after we "fixed" it. lol. Well my partner fixed it, he used to be a diesel mechanic.

I know how to do it now. But I'm not the sort to start just start clipping wires.