Do Any Company Trucks Have Thermostats?

My greenapu does a pretty good job self regulateing. The worst i have recorded was 3 degrees off from what i set it to.

As towards the tech its a combination of things. Biggest one however is cost. To a O/O like me i would just pay the extra $150 to make my cab nicer. To a fleet like swift buying tens of thousands of trucks where half end up in the ditch withij a year anyway....$150 per rig is now almost $4 million bucks not worth it to them. Its dumb but these trucks are catered to the money makers. Not the drivers. So if they can save millions in equipment a year they do.

There are other reasons too but thats the big one. Its also why you see O/O rigs even ones like mine that started life as a fleet rig start to get little QoL upgraded either at purchase or wired in as time and money permit.

 

They work great.
You'll get used to engines firing up at all hours, trucks driving by, air brakes, and will sleep through all of it. A sound that doesn't belong will wake you i.e. glass breaking or knock on your door.

 

Schneider’s newer trucks have the battery powered electric APU. The one I’m in now has it. The truck I had before had a Thermoking diesel APU so I wasn’t sure how I’d like the battery one, but I love it now. Very quiet and no vibration at night. Even the diesel APU can be distributive of sleep when it starts and stops. Maybe not quite as bad as the main engine. The thermostat doesn’t have specific degrees, but you figure out where you like it and it keeps it a pretty constant temperature.

 

It has.

I'm not aware of any companies that require a driver to use opti-idle.

 

If you don’t have at least an electric APU to go with it, then you have to use opti-idle in comfort mode to stay cool in warm weather

 

I know - my point is that I'm not aware of a company that forces a driver to use opti-idle. I don't have an apu but if I'm willing to put up with the heat then I don't have to opti-idle.

 

The Webasto bunk heaters I had all had a digital display, pictured in post #3 for temp setting. My bunk heaters also had a 10 hour timer so that it would only run for 10 hours since the last time you activated/changed the temp setting, or until you turned the truck ignition switch to run or start position. If you were taking a 34 hour reset in some area with prolonged cold temps and you were using the bunk heater every 10 hours you would need to turn the heater back on or adjust the temp before it shut off at 10 hours.

 

I've never had any truck with Opti-Idle or an electric APU. My trucks had no APU for many many years. And my trucks for maybe the last 10-15 years had diesel powered APUs and sometimes diesel fired bunk heaters. Opti-Idle is only on SOME trucks or in SOME company's fleets. Opti-Idle is just one of the many ways to provide a non-running truck with HVAC and electrical power.

 

Yes, I should have said my bunk heater does have a digital thermostat control, even though it seems like it's about 10 degrees off. There's also a way to easily change the 10hr timer to make it longer. The ThermoKing and Freightliner ParkSmart APU controls I've seen have never had a digital thermostat.