Turning off-truck engines in traffic

I have actually seen ####### brainwashed Schneider drivers shut off their engines at intersections... LOL Unbelievable...

 

i also do it because it's quiet and you eliminate vibration; i run the pike alot and recently there's been quite a bit of slowdowns stoppages---upto 45 mins.

If you have a decent starter there should be no problems. Look at all the LTL trucks who make upto 20 stops a day.

 

I know pebble haulers that shut the truck off every time they stop, the motor uses the same amount of fuel to start as it does running, at idle. The motor will not turn over more than 3 revolutions to start. A starter is cheap, if it is a problem starting the truck you should not be on the road period.

 

Bing! Keep your crappy, non-functional trucks off the road! No brainer on the fuel savings and pollution reduction if your truck is roadworthy. Otherwise park it.

 

The last company truck I drove used to shut off in traffic when stopped waiting for trains and such.

It would only idle about 3 minutes or so.

 

As an owner, I would never have mine set to automatically shut down period.

 

Uh huh. Ignore those times it doesn't wanna go on the first crank, keep trying and it'll go sooner or later. And then when it dies in traffic, "WTF happened"?

 

i would say if you've got good batteries(and you should) and a decent starter you'll have no problems unless you're overworking it deliberately----running the starter for more than 15 seconds at a time and not letting it cool off. But you would never have to do that if everything is right with the system.


i would think that starting a warm engine would take much, much less fuel than if you let it idle for even 1 minute. Remember the engine is fuel injected---the computer isn't going to inject any more fuel than nessesary to start the engine. That is, if you have a decent computer---i.e., DDEC or cummins. i can't speak for cat.


Not on a cold engine either-----because it would take at least 2 hours for an engine to get cold. In order to keep it warm you would have to idle for 2 hours. It's not going to take 2 gallons (or how ever much fuel it took to idle for 2 hours) to start a cold engine.

Idling makes no sense, other than keeping yourself warm/cool if there is no other alternative, and should be stopped.