An old man's career goes flat, Snackbar moves to open deck

I am putting Carrier APU's and Volvo trucks in the same column as Peoplenet and International Maxxfarce engines. Got woken up by the sound of my truck's low voltage alarm. Checked the APU settings and the battery monitor option is ON, and the voltage is set to 12.0 volts, but the APU never started to charge the batteries, and the volts were down to 11.7, and the calibration was accurate. Thinking the unit failed to start like it has been doing, I hit the APU button, and it fired right up without a hiccup of a sputter. So now I feel I can't trust going to sleep without starting the APU, whether I need it or not for temperature control. When I start filtering out companies for my next job the 1st question won't be how much pay or how often home or even driver facing cameras. It will be if they have APU's, and what brand. If they say yes and Carrier, I will apologize for taking up their time and say goodbye. If they say yes and TK, then I will ask if they use Peoplenet, again if the answer is yes, then it's goodbye. Companies must get a heck of a deal from Carrier to put these units on their trucks because I have had more issues out of the 2 I have had here than all of the dozen or so Tripac units that I have had over the years combined.

 

Just using battery monitor since we have the fuel fired bunk heater.

 

I've tried mine...it wasn't what I would consider heat...it was more like luke warm. It might be fine for a chilly evening, but anything below 25 there is no way it would keep up, even on high heat.

 

I'll give that a try tonight and see if it helps. It's gonna be a cold couple days, one isn't even gonna be above 0° so I may be idling the big engine

 

Had a surprise this morning. My load was a pin point live load (for non-SPD drivers, that's what they call a set appointment). It was 25 miles from the yard, so I figured an hour and a half would be plenty. About the time my wheels hit the interstate, mother nature decided to hit the area with a snow squall and the traffic came to a halt. It took me an hour and a quarter to get to the shipper. The load was on the trailer and secured within an hour or so. A whopping 3000 lbs with most of the east bound interstates closed in SD or WY for blizzard conditions. The load doesn't have to be there until Thursday next week at the latest, but I was hoping to get this there by Monday or Tuesday.