trucking companies with apu's

There are numerous companies out there that put APU's on their company trucks, not just owner ops. My current company Melton has them on every truck, Trans Am has them on a lot of their trucks, as well as numerous other companies.

 

When starting out, how powerful of an inverter do you know how to get?

 

all equipment have a sticker somewhere that has it's wattage use. add them up and add a few.

 

stevens has apus on every truck. hogan has epus on all trucks. i dont like the epu at all.

 

Why don't people just bring a $300 generator. You can use it to supply power to several things.

 

If your a company driver I wouldn't send 8000 on an apu. One they are h eavy two when you putit on one truck in a year or so they will put you in a new truck and have to mount it on there again.. I work at Maverick and we have to pay to put stuff in the truck. For example have a buddy that bought a driver seat and they were going to charge him 150 bucks to put it in. But alot of flatbed companies want let you put an epu or apu on them because of the weight. Maverick Transportation has epu on the truck with inverters. Love them they work great. But if you own your truck then I would go with an epu. They run off batteries and charge when the truck is running during the day. Apu you have to put fuel in and that adds up $$$$$$. Just my opinion. But good luck in your choice.

 

If you have an APU installed on your truck then your truck is qualified for a 400 lb weight exemption. 400lbs on the drive axles and 400lbs on gross. It should come with a copy of the certificate from the manufacturer. It was passed as part of a highway bill during the Bush administration, 05 or 06 as I recall. We have 100% APU equipped fleet at USA Truck. Every truck has a copy of the certificate from manufacturer (Thermoking in our case) that we keep in the permit book citing the specific law.

 

Epu's are good for 10hrs before needing a recharge , then how do you recharge it if you sitting still on a 34hr restart? Idle? That's costly isn't it ? At a gallon an hr. Yes it is.
Apu's properly installed are by far the smartest way to go . Opti Idle would be great if indeed it fires a truck up for both driver comfort and low voltage , then you can install the inverter and not worry about the voltage dropping beyond what's needed for cranking power. Again opti idle would idle the truck quite often through the night if you have a decent size fridge , like a 4.5 cubic ft 2 door fridgadaire. This type of fridge won't sit in a cabinet , a cabinet has to be removed. Also the heat the fridge compressor puts out help keep bunk warm til temps drop below about 46 degree . Apu's are a heck of a lot cheaper to run than a trk engine , Apu's are supposed to only use about a gal. per 8 hrs whereas the truck engine's sucking a gal an hr. So the different is big and affordable. No way would I own my own without a thermo king properly installed. Not with fuel prices of today , no way.

 

If you drive for a company and use the APU installed on the truck, are you responsible for paying for the fuel to power it?

 

The fuel that is used for the apu comes from the fuel tanks. It would be very hard for the company to charge you for fuel coming out of the tanks. Not impossible though. When an apu is installed on a truck, they expect you to run it when necessary(heat, ac, low voltage). But they might frown on the idea of running the apu for ac when then temperature outside is 60 degrees.