Indian River

I don't know of any tractors that are equipped to heat loads. I know Oakley does as their drivers carry jugs of glycol which is the liquid used to pump through the tank heat tubing.

Cocoa Butter needs to be warm for it to flow, but the only Cocoa Butter loads I have pulled are only about 120 miles from the shipper so it doesn't really have time to cool down and congeal even if it sits in the tank overnight.

The tanks are well insulated, I think there's only a 1 or 2 degree change per day depending on outside temps of course.

 

I don't work for IR, but I have used in-transit heat. At that company, it was simply a pair of hoses plumbed to the truck's cooling system--easy on, easy off.

Certain oils need to be heated; palm oil for one. That stuff will be solid halfway through the day if it isn't kept at 190 or above.

 

My truck is equipped with it. There are hoses on my truck that you can hook up to the trailer and it will circulate the truck's coolant through the trailer to keep the product warm. This can be a pain if the trailer isn't already full on coolant. You have to pull over and top off your coolant several times sometimes, depending on how much is in the trailer. I know from experience from when I tried out hauling chemicals at Elliott (now known as Custom Commodities). I hauled a couple loads of rubber processing oil that became extremely thick and impossible to unload if not kept hot.

 

It's there any drivers here that live in the North East (Massachusetts,Connecticut,ect)... That can give me a general idea on how IRT would run you? Thanks in advance.

 

@Redtwin runs in the northeast pretty much exclusively so I'm sure he could give you some good info.

 

Thats how we did ours. I had to constantly have 6 jugs or so of coolant at all times during the winter and if that trailer wasnt charged with coolant already it usually took some time to get up and ready......and usually the hydraulic hoses ends were seized up with rust so that was a good time

 

I see one of your IRT youtubers made a big boo boo while getting unloaded.......or moving a trailer out of a bay to get her trailer in. Long story short she assumed it was an empty but it was still attached with a hose and being unloaded. Didn't do a visual walk around.
I feel very bad for her but holy crap that could have turned out way worse. She was terminated.

 

I'm not sure about OTR drivers that actually live in the NE. There are local drivers that run a dedicated customer in NJ, but they pretty much have that locked down. You won't see any of those runs unless someone is off work.

I tend to work regional even though I'm an OTR driver. That means going up to Canada although we don't have as many of those loads as we used to. I also run milk/cream from Virginia and Maryland south to Florida and occasionally south to Alabama. There are also short runs that originate in the Northeast but they aren't plentiful enough for an OTR driver to rely on.

When it's in season, there are Apple juice loads out of NY and Cranberry juice out of Quebec. Those can be going to Florida or way out west to Washington State and California.