Sleeper compartment section in trailer?

Supply & demand. There is no shortage of sleeper trucks on the market in any variety of specs. Day cabs can be difficult to find, especially as you get into specifics on how it needs to be spec'd. "New" day cabs might cost less than a "new" sleeper with similar drivetrain and suspension specs, but on the "used" market that day cab with desireable specs is a rare beast.

 

Yup, years ago, almost all yard horses were daycabs. Now, just about every yard horse is an old sleeper truck.

 

Never seen it done with trailer. Seen bed buggers pull over and swing open back doors to sleep on contents.

 

Yeppers. In the day cab world companies keep the truck until it dies. Then they put it on life support for another 6 months....

In the otr world companies get rid of trucks at 300k-600k miles.

 

Your sleeper stays with the tractor because trailers need to be dropped and hooked etc.

There is no bulkhead strong enough between a human space and 48 feet of heavy stuff. It's bad enough that even flatbed steel can mash a cab if loaded suicide.

You can build a space for a human anywhere provided that human has at least one access door out in addition to the trailer doors. You can take 48 foot make it a house or a palace... and use the 5 feet left for two pallets of unabotnium.... /snark.

Passage between trailer and tractor will use the diaphragm system used by Pullman Heavyweights and Passenger Lightweight cars in the late steam era into the modern desiel era where people pass between rail cars in that manner while in motion. Some steam engines did feature a passage in the tender for people to get to a dormitory car to keep moving on particularly high schedule priority or MAIN (Military troop movements...) trains. The engine will be limited by coal and water supplies. Usually a ton for so many miles on coal provided that it can scoop water from track pans on the move and lube oil for the side rods and all other motion parts. (Which require a squirt every 60 miles or so...)

Such arrangements will be excessively heavy for a tractor trailer.

The best thing is to build a nice apartment behind the drivers seat up to as much of the frame as you can fit in front of the 5th wheel and still make the turns with trailer attached. I suppose at some point in the future the 5th wheel will be disposed of in favor of a crawler type wheel set centipede, each one electrically or hydrauically driven. It might fit better crabbing into a dock rather than doing circles.

 

My boss from a small company had one of his trailers made into a room I found it to be unusually neat.He used that trailer for vacation trips.

 

Well then you never had to deal with a dealer with a glut of trucks because that's pretty much what they do.

 

I suppose you could get a wagon and convert the front 1/4, and still have room for freight. Nobody says you have to haul 49,000 lb beer loads all the time. Not sure what you'd haul in a short box, I'd think a flatbed would be more conducive to partial loads, like a machine or who knows, and you could mount a small camper on the front of the flatbed. It's just, on your time off, you want to be driving a semi around? It could work. I almost mounted a camper on the back of my '72 Pete in my avatar. Saw a guy that did that, but decided agin it. I didn't want to be rowing thru the gears in traffic jams. I'm retired, you know. I did enough of that.