How much fuel does an APU use?

Those numbers are accurate for the carrier. It beats the hell out of idling and setting your idle high. When you close the sleeper curtains it definitely will make it an ice box. In extreme heat, it'll take longer to cool, may even have difficulty keeping up but you won't burn to death. Once it gets cooled off then I'll open the sleeper curtains to cool off the rest of the truck. In Texas or Arizona it'll take a good ½ hour to an hour to cool to ice box level in the midst of summer

 

Not sure what they are talking about. Plenty of room for the HVAC unit under the bed. Same with our 680’s.

 

APUs for sure use less fuel than idling. Easiest way to figure that out is look at the MEGAs. If they are spending the money to put an APU in the truck. Then it is saving them more money than idling would.

 

The Pro-Heat unit I had would run for 8 hrs on about a half gallon. Try a Kubota tractor muffler. I put one on mine and it shut it right up.

 

It’s a cup of diesel an hour for a Thermoking APU
Ask me how I know !

 

Good point.
The largest mega, Swift, does not use them simply because they are not cost effective.

 

Then I guess Stevens Transport knows something that Swift doesn't. Because they have them on every truck because it is cost effective. But they have thermoking APUs and Reefers. So maybe that is why it is better in the long run. Bulk discounts. But fuel wise for sure less used by an APU.

 

1st the truck uses .5-.7 gl per hr idling (5-7 gl per 10hr break)
They only use more if HIGH idling...

APU's use .2-.5 gl per hr for cooling in the summer (2-5 gl per 10hr break)

At best a apu will save 5gl per 10 hr break.... at my discount fuel price that's a saving of $25 per day... at best the apu will use a minimum of 2gl ($10)

New apu is $12,000 ÷ $25 (a day) = 480 day to break even @300 days a year (avg numbers of days worked) with zero maintenance or repairs that's almost 2 years... not counting all the days (spring/fall/winter) not used and it more like (at 150 days a year) it more like 4 years....

A portable generator and portable ac is less than $1000 all in (1/12 the price of a new apu). Uses 2gl of gas ($9 @ todays price)...

My setup was 1/12 the price of a apu
My maintenance cost is 1/5 that of a apu.
My fuel cost is 15% less

I can replace everything new ever other year for 12 years just to equal just the cost of a new apu.....

 

In fairness considering the percentage of swift trucks that get trashed you can hardly blame them for refuseing to use 20k units on a truck thats unlikely to make it a year before being wrecked.

Your math is likely good for your truck but not all of us have new rigs. In my 17 i use 1.3 gallons an hour at low idle and 1.6 at high idle. The 389k i used when i was company used 1.5 at low and 1.8 at high idle.

My tripack according to the flow meter i installed just to keep track on my spreadhseets uses an average of .15 gallons from january though august. however i will use .25 just to pad numbers to account for less efficent units.

My current fuel price is on average $5.50 over the last month on average. My semi uses 13 gallons an hour to low idle. At a cost of 5.50 that is $71.5 a night. My apu uses .25 an hour so 2.5 gallons or 13.75.

So my nightly savings is already $57.5 a night. Or assumeing that i work 40 weeks a year means just idleing is 20k a year at current fuel prices with my motor. My apu will use 3850. So it pays for itself in the first year just on its lonesome using worst case numbers against apus at current fuel.

However thats not the entire story either. Keep in mind just idleing the truck is incuring some pretty high costs. You will need to change your oil twice as often, parts will have a lot of additional wear and tear on them and if so equiped your burning def which is also getting pricy.

Then there is the fact that during the winter months my fuel use drops to .05 gallons an hour or about $3 a day for heat and also keeps my block, filters and fuel tanks warm with my batterys topped off at the exact same time due to my having an arctic point system. So the odds of my having gelled fuel are very low.

In that 3 month period im saving about 6k alone and preventing several potential issues. For example lets say i get stuck for a week as happened to some guys last year. With an APU i have zero fear of running out of fuel. Ideling the truck i will be out of fuel by day 5 or 6 unless i shut it off for hours at a time. And also the APU gives me a backup heating and cooling system. So even if my truck breaks....well i dont need to boil or freeze waiting for a wrecker.

Lastly you also discount that a lot of us take resets or need to wait hours and hours for a shipper to load or unload which even further pushes numbers in favor of the APU.

 

The argument that Swift doesn't use APU's because idling is cheaper is a little spurious. With idle shut off timers, it's pretty clear that Swift has determined that it's cheaper to NEITHER idle or APU, let the poor ######## sweat....

We've had an EPU on the last truck, and when I took it to Vegas last week (regular guy was off), I was nice and cool in the sleeper at 105. ambient. Fuel use: 0. For the win..