Engine Idling & Staying Cool

Cowpie1, you make a good point about insulation, particularly floor insulation. Have you checked into any of those 12v coolers? Might be the ticket for cooling at a far lower cost of installation than an APU.

 

Even down here if I hadn't run across a bargain I don't think I would have. The bunk in my truck needed the whole shabang any way and the APU I bought was designed to fit where that unit was. Course my lines are capped and the front is still working like it should. Im not sure what the rear unit cost from Pete or aftermarket but I got 1500.00 in the APU. I may be crying the blues any way when i start using it. lol

 

Interesting how the companies that pay the least are also the tightest about idle policy. You'd think with all the money they save on payroll they could afford a bit more fuel.

 

It affects the upper management bonuses.

 

Working at US xpress, I got a call once about being over idle. Didn't really care, been here 5 months and only heard about it once. Idle when you need to, iys pretty hard to get fired from the crap companies with policies like that. If they stay on your butt about it, hopefully you have 6 months to a year experience to get into at least a slightly better company.

 

More and more of the anti idle laws are getting passed. I can see the merit to a point. Trucks park in the lot next to my property. Some leave the truck running for 2 days and not in it. So, it led them to "ban trucks" from the community.

However, many of the anti idle issues have been around as each of the megas find ways to stop the trucks from idle. It just shows what they think of the drivers.

 

Well, it is true that the regulations put the hardship on the driver, and many management board rooms do not take this into account when crunching their numbers, at least the industry big wheels are starting to promote that companies need to start factoring in the driver more. I get a lot of daily email article stuff from fleet management rags and websites, and the number of articles that stress driver satisfaction for retention is increasing a lot. It is becoming a more prevalent topic at major trucking conferences and symposiums. There will be some change, but as usual, it will change will come about as fast as molasses flowing in winter.

 

Frankly speaking, I'm wondering why we don't kill two birds with one stone? There's all that surface area on top of the sleeper that would be ideal for installing solar panels that could be dedicated to air conditioning in the cab. It would be a win-win: comfortable driver and drastically decreased fuel bill.