A Better Fridge

Hello,

I'm not a truck driver but I'm working on making a better fridge for family road trips and was thinking it may be useful to truck drivers.

I added an internal fan to an igloo 60 quart cooler. I've also made a few other improvements, here are the pros and cons:

Pros:

1. The fan blows on ice that sits in a bucket so there is no watery mess.

2. The hottest part of a cooler, just under the lid, drops down to 42F with a fan, enough to keep perishables from spoiling. With out a fan it's 60F just under the lid. The outside ambient was 80F for these tests.

3. The ice can be replaced when you stop for gas, it runs with one 10lb bag.

4. There's more room for food because the ice is off to the side in a bucket.

5. It doesn't use much power. The fan only needs 2-3W. It runs off a 12V/24 outlet and charges a battery pack that will run for 12 hours when the engine is off.

6. It can cool a warm drink down faster than a real fridge, easily in 30 min.


Cons:

1. The ice retention is lower. The ice will not last about as long as compared to 'no fan'. A 10lb bucket would take about 8 hours to melt but it should be changed out at about 6 hours.

2. It's no good for frozen food because the fan is trying to equalize everything to the same temperature, which is somewhere above freezing. So it acts like a defroster for frozen foods. So the trade off is poorer ice retention in exchange for something that approaches fridge temperatures.

There is some room for improvement. For example the lid of the igloo cooler was not insulated so I filled it with spray foam, a hack job. The lid was still cool/cold to the touch. I'm also looking at other coolers and other insulating materials, I may just design a new cooler.

I tested it on a long road trip and it worked fine. We had milk, cheese and yogurt in it for a week at a time and nothing spoiled. When we pulled in to a hotel/motel I just dumped out the ice bucket and filled it at the ice machine. It still worked well with crappy hotel ice

Questions:

1. Does this sound useful for truckers? Or do truckers simply install a compressor fridge?

2. What is a typical size cooler that truckers use? I chose 60 quarts for mine but it could easily make it bigger or smaller.

3. What about the position of the lid? Most coolers have the lid on top and I was thinking about a double door version on the front, like a french door fridge. Makes it easier to have shelves but that may be worse if the cooler is low on the ground and you need to crouch down..

Any thoughts/comments appreciated,

-jason