apu unit

As also does the WalMart fleet, which is NOT known for foolish spending or inefficiency.

 

Well when you get one put on your truck that's brand new and it breaks down 8 times in about 18 months you tend to form the opinion it's garbage.

 

I will certainly agree that they are NOT trouble free, I put on 7 alternators in about 6000 hours of operation. Every replacement was a slightly different model/improvement. I got an early unit and many of what has gone wrong has been changed or modified. I am close to 11,000 hours now.
The biggest positives in my opinion are the large service network of the TK dealerships for when you have problems, and the integration with the ESPAR heater, so that the unit does not need to run all the time when you want heat in the winter.
If someone else would build one that worked automatically with an ESPAR/Airtronics type heater, had 120v on demand generation instead of just the wimpy DC alternator the TriPac has, and had an existing large service and parts network, I sure would be interested!

 

Don't get me wrong I like it when it works. But dealing with Ryder to get it fixed is a pain in the ###. It needs an alternator now. In the past it has had alt brackets replaced
and wiring issues.