Should A New Driver Allow No APU/INVERTER to be a Deal Breaker?

Personally I will not work for a company without power inverters anymore, unless they can top out my pay. I play a lot of video games and have a fridge. I also have an APU, but man its loud. Living in the truck with these objects, makes trucking life fun and easy.

 

that's the way it should be,make life more tolerable when your away from home for weeks at a time.I've never needed a powerful inverter only needed it for my phone laptop and portable DVD player.back when I was otr the idling policy wasn't thought of till a few years later .

 

Did you throw Werner in that list as a joke?
They have a strict no inverter policy. Heard it from the horse's mouth.

 

My 2 cents from a newbie driver.

A few years back we had a terrible ice storm in my area that left I 81 and much the area shut down for several days. Truckers that had to idle their truck just to keep warm consumed about 1 gal of fuel an hour. Those with an APU consumed 1/10 gal in an hour. Those with an APU and inverter that had a stove or microwave, refrigerator etc and food were ok.

Another benefit of an APU still relates to fuel MPG. Some companies pays a bonus based on fuel MPG.

 

The companies that have APUs that are "starter" companies

Navajo
Stevens
Gordon
WEL
Tyson
Melton
Marten
PTL

Feel free to add to that list.

 

I stay out 4 weeks at a time. YEP, have an APU and 2500w Inverter. Have Microwave, Real Fridge, TV, etc. Its my home from home. When I first started driving I looked for these things in a Company. Our trucks are no idle. Dam near killed us couple of years back in that Polar Vortex we have. NO APU or Bunk Heater could keep up. LOL. We had 30-40 trucks Gel up even with anti gel in the tanks.

 

that's quite a few companies.

 

Yup. The options are there (and by the way, not all of those companies are "bad" by any stretch) and people need to do their research. They don't and end up at the first place that takes them, because a lot of these guys, let's be honest, not all that bright to begin with. We're not pulling from MENSA here, and the quality of person that we're getting is sliding further further down the garbage can.

 

An APU is good, but you don't want that alone, you want a fridge too. Electric coolers just aren't made for the amount of time you'd use them, In my short time OTR, I've gone through 3 of those things, because we weren't allowed to install a fridge.

It doesn't matter if you're just starting as your first driving job, or if you have 20 years of experience... You're going to be living in that truck, it's your home. Demand some type of power source like an APU or an inverter on a truck that'll start and stop itself to keep the battery charged, demand a fridge, demand being home when you're scheduled to be home (don't buy into the range of hours crap, that just means that you can get home late, and be forced back out at the minimum amount of home time), demand good benefits.

Trucking tends to have this fake prestige to it... You gotta earn your dues, you gotta learn to shift without the clutch, you gotta work crappy jobs to get the good ones. BS. What nurse gets their license and then starts as an aid? What chef graduates from a cooking school and goes and washes dishes? You deserve a standard of living, everyone does, and everyone needs to start demanding to be treated the way they deserve.