Can you still have a microwave and watch TV without an APU? OR do you have to idle all the time for

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Among the reasons I am Changing companies

 

I have a 6000 watt inverter with 4 odyssey batteries and never had a problem with running everything with the truck off.

 

Thanks to a DEF tank and a drop axle, there's no place to mount an APU.

Instead, I spend the winter in Canada idling, and the company complains about my high idle time.

 

I just tell them I have a cat in the truck.
They won’t risk the wrath of peta.

 

We used a large inverter in our time I think 2500 watt continuous and almost 4000 peak. FFE had 7 separate officers from 7 separate departments formally signed one document allowing us authority to install this inverter at our expense at a freight-liner dealership to that particular truck. Once the 7 high muckyamucks signed that paper, a provision was put in that FFE owns and keeps the inverter as it was installed without damage or interference from us because at that time in the 2001 early sleep apnea was beginning to be a thing where it's possible to reissue that tractor to a driver who needs 120 volts later.

So. That inverter drove a Mr Coffee generally. The Television was specifically a dual voltage made for trucking on sale at 200. Fit right into the then new Century with it's own Antennas. The little 300 watt metal fan cooled inverter went up front with the laptop computers and GPS plus charging cell phones. No problems. That inverter lasted just about 20 years before it burned up in one of our cars. We would buy that exact inverter again without hesitation for the small stuff.

Our Century drove the inverter with 4 batteries at 15.1 volts at cruise speed. Any time we drove the big inverter sitting still we will take it up to 1500 idle set. And run the thing just long enough to make a pot of cofffee or whatever.

The laptop handled certain one person turn based games and two particular dailup online gaming, usually Novalogic's DFLW or something similar. The performance of the laptops in those days were quite poor to be honest with you. And one reason I learned to build uber big desktops with many graphic cards and so on. I still build them to this day. I got one planned for next year to replace this one. And ex's computer I built for her back in 2006 is still soldering on. Probably 12+ years now and maybe 65000 hours on that CPU and Cooler. No problems so far. Most computers I get 4 years if over clocked or 8 or so years or more if not overclocked. Im going on 4 years with this one 24/7.

But will I run this in a big truck? No. I need 30 amps off a T connection plus around I think 8000 watts to run everything.

I don't know of any inverter big enough to feed that monster. The next one will have TWO seperate power supplies each at 30 amps from the wall T plug,

 

The bumpy ride will just ruin any hard drive in a hurry. But thanks to solid state drives, you could possibly game on a laptop while the truck is moving. Not PvP games, certainly, but casual single players like Elder Scrolls and Fallout should be fine.

 

As a Canadian who works for a Canadian company, I don't care about what they say about my idle time. I'll do my part to keep it down, but if I'm cold/hot or need electricity, I'm idling the truck. They don't provide APU's (mostly because the cost of idling the truck is about the same as the cost to install one) and a good night's sleep is the best defense against unsafe driving.