Why so many winter (water based) liquid loads posted for vans?

Never underestimate sub zero temps colder than -20 Water freezes in seconds while it moves. Had to thaw milk from momma cows from pump bucket to calf pails. Freezing milk before it drops into pump pail! Using coolers of hot water to thaw milk to move it 50’. Insanity. Let’s just say my wife is happy we don’t have the farm anymore. Pic is of lake freezing during wind and waves. So sure take that ice mountain load from stanwood to Fargo in early February during a arctic snap. Pick up Friday and deliver Monday. Just let her idle. Be just fine.

 

Considering my friend runs from Worland WY back to Western MT and they also haul bottled soda and water out of Butte MT and they do it all year long regardless of the weather with regular non-heated dry vans I’m going to take his word for it that idling overnight keeps stuff from freezing.

 

Freezing water pallets is last of your worries when you are hauling water . Frozen moisture stuck to the roof and sidewalls will be fun to clean and most food places will reject the trailer .

 

I always cheated. I had a propane blowtorch flamethrower for cleaning out brush. Pop a BBQ tank onto the catwalk for storage and pull it off with one of those, light and set it to very low. Worked like a charm most of the time.

 

As long as your moving it will not freeze.

 

Haul it with confidence. Like Honeybadger mentioned, it won't freeze in a dry van if you're idling while parked. That slight agitation is all that's needed to keep it from freezing.

 

A paint store in Calgary only ever did a store to Edmonton store transfer on the coldest day of the year (-30 to -40). Some of the paint would freeze and separate out and they would put in a claim. After a few years of this the trucking company I was at finally noticed the paint store only ever used us for this one shipment a year.
So they refused them as a customer after that.
They were shipping old stock they couldn’t sell and hoping it would freeze so they could claim a loss on it.
Back then they didn’t have heated and insulated trailers, so they would just through in a propane heater for the trip.

 

The agitation of idling may delay the freezing by keeping the water in the bottles moving and therefore reducing the thermal gradient of the case/pallet.

But once that water reaches freezing, the vibration would prevent the water from supercooling, ensuring it would freeze solid.

The good news in that scenario is that the physical change of water to ice releases at lot of heat, roughly 6 times the heat needing released to cool the water 1°C. That helps protect the inner parts of case/pallet from freezing.

 

We used to haul bottled water back in the day. Always made me nervous as well. I definitely always kept idling overnight and hoped for not having a break down. It’s higher risk for sure which is why it pops up as opportunity. I wouldn’t haul unless your very confident in your equipment. They don’t care once it’s loaded onto you.

 

I never mind doing it when I had my other truck. The APU when idling would do enough unless it was really cold. With new truck I don't have that option so would have to idle truck and not gonna happen unless it pays big bucks. Ha Ha