"Protect from freezing" dry van experiences.

It was probably already mentioned in this thread but all it really means is to leave your truck idling. It causes the liquid in the containers to agitate and they will not freeze.

 

Sorry to show my foolish Ness. But from what I'm getting from these messages. Are just because its freeseing out the trailer. Does not mean its freeseing in side? Am I right?
I am familiar with heated trailers. So my question is based soley on dry box with no hvac unit.

 

It been over ten years ago we got rid of our heated trailers and propane heater only use blankets that wrap the pallets or put them on top the whole load every body (mega's) use them.

 

Idle the truck. The vibration will keep the liquid moving just enough to prevent freeing.

 

I checked my trailer interior temperature sensor in the morning. It was 49 while the temp outside was 1. My temperature recorder keeps the history for the last 24 hrs. The temperature did not go below 49 even though while driving temps were around -5 for several hours. The interior temp right now is 55. The history shows it went up to 56 today.

 

any truck will send out fibration when running even if you dont feel it and does help product from freezing up to a point but even niagra falls freezes if it gets cold enough for long enough ..... when i worked for overland expres in the 80s they dropped a trailer full of ragu spaghetti sauce in sub zero temperatures and it frooze enough to crack a few and get the load kicked ...... picked a trailer up a a railyard a few years ago full of bottled water on a reefer out of fuel and was frooze rock solid but they excepted the load ....... cambells soup used to have not sure if its still done but they had,a formula that used the forcasted temperatures and how many hours load was on the trailer to determine whether to use a reefer or dry van

 

For what it’s worth, I recently hauled beer over three nights with temperatures down to the 20 mark in a refer.

the refer was set to 50 degrees, stop start. It would rarely come on, and when it did it was to cool the box down to 50, as the temperature would rise in there.

The point is that all that liquid mass in there seemed to slow any temperature changes. I figure the same affect would take place in a dry van to some degree.

 

I haul beer. It's my primary contract, but it's a short 120 mile haul. Both of my trailers are insulated ex-reefer units with the reefer removed. We had one panic event at -40F that a truck broke and nobody could get moving to rescue it. 8 hours later we hooked a truck to it and got it to the distributor. Even though that beer started at 38F, my temp gun said it was still at 37F when I delivered it. That thermal mass is incredible at keeping things thawed for long time periods. I would imagine a load of tobasco in cardboard boxes would be safe for days even at temps of 10F.