Cooler or Refrigerator? Want to eat healthy on the road.

While at USX i had a 5.3CuFt fridge with a small freezer, microwave, and George Forman grill. Ran it all off a a 1500watt inverter.

My weekly spending went from $120-$150 down to around $60. I also lost a crap ton of weight. The addition of a crock pot would have been great, i just never thought about that.

I also always bought tuna fish in the little pouch, so much easier to deal with. I would cook in the truck if it was supper cool out or raining, otherwise i cooked on my cat walk via an extension cord.

I would advise all noobs to do this, what a difference it makes in your health & quality of life.

 

If you don't do it right, the vibration will make the system fall apart, wear holes in tubing, etc. In the winter you will have to watch for the drain line freezing.

 

If all you are considering is the food angle, the old schoolers didn't have it that hard. Carry more crackers and dry food, as opposed to stuff that needs refrigeration. If you consider the suspension, amenities in the trucks, and access to truck service locations, that's a different story.

 

Well first off those old trucks were cab overs and there was NO space between the seats and the sleeper. Condo's were not on the road then. Most of these drivers had a hook to keep maybe 4 or 5 articles of clothing hung up. Everything else went under the bunk in those spaces. These guys really did not carry much food. It was a different world. However they seemed to get by.

 

Drivers used to do more work unloading their trailers. Easier to get away with eating less healthy.

 

I suspect there were many drivers of the day eating a lot of peanut butter in sandwiches and on crackers. When I first started driving, I went a couple months with no cooler. Peanut butter is easy mode food. Honey as well. Both go well with bread, and don't take up much space.

Then add in canned tuna and beef jerky if you want. Both of which are easy to store.

Food is far more convenient today, but it wasn't that hard to keep yourself fed on the road as a driver if you didn't mind eating a lot of identical foods/meals.

Remember, refrigeration was not commonplace in homes 100 years ago, and even into the early 1950's, many people used ice boxes (giant blocks of ice delivered to your house and put in the ice box by the ice man) not refrigerators. Many of the drivers of several decades ago grew up in homes where they had to store food with little or no reliable refrigeration.

It's a different world in many, many ways.

 

Some of those pre 1970 cabovers were also a bit more physically demanding to drive @ChaoSS . I had a chance once in the 80s to drive a 1964 White Cabover from Atlanta to my home then about 90 miles away. That dang truck was a bear to drive. Hot no AC NO radio and it made so much noise I could not hear myself think. The HOS regulations that came into effect in 1938 were enacted because of the huge physical demands driving put on a trucker. After 10 hours of this kind of driving a driver needed that break. This is one reason so many cafe's sprung up along these old routes. If you start to look you can still see these old buildings. I have forgot what the old US Route was that got de_commissioned by I 20 in Texas. However I have seen many of these old cafe's on those old routes. THIS is where most of those old timers ate and took their breaks. It was a totally different world pre 1970, it just was.

 

The cafes are another thing. Used to be a lot more places where a driver could park and eat. These days those places are more limited, lots of parking is done is rest areas with no food availability or truck stops with fast food or really bad food available.

 

To be honest I was not talking about truck stops and going to sleep. I was talking about cafe's and diners all across the country where drivers stopped for an hour or so ate and maybe took a brief nap. Remember in those days most drivers logbooks were at best more like a comic book. My father took pills and sometime drove for 20 hours or more. This was widespread at the time. Actually these days those places are almost gone. Almost unheard of here on the east coast and nowhere near what it was out west. These drivers really did not have to take much with them except for a coffee thermos and maybe a sandwich because of all these cafes and diners. Food was cheap. My father told me once he could stop at a cafe have a full meal and maybe cost him $.75. Hell Diesel was only $.05 a gallon in places like NJ in those days. Also a huge amount of these drivers had regular routes and if they did not show up some drivers and wait staffs would actually worry about that driver.

 

I personally love my Igloo 12 volt cooler. My first one had to be replaced because the plug melted after 6 months, my second one melted the plug in for months. Due to getting a GPS I ended up getting one of the Splitters to turn one Outlet into two from loves. My third cooler melted the splitter after about 6 months but the plug itself was fine. I have been on this cooler and plug for 16 months now.