Handling the Cold...HOW DO YOU DO IT?

Take a hot shower!

 

We have APU's that keep the block warm, fuel somewhat warm, cab warm, and batteries charged. Plus, we don't sit around a lot (beyond 10-15 hour breaks) unless we're on home time. Others have different options.

 

I just leave my two trucks on. Easier than starting them in -10. They’ve been running since Monday. One has no emissions the other does but I haven’t had any problems with it so far. I’ll shut them off for the weekend though today since it will be 40 degrees warmer Monday.

 

Forget the electric blanket. Instead use a comforter or two. The idea is plenty of loft (inches of insulation).

Don't forget that you may need insulation UNDER you. Many companies provide a mattress that may not insulate well. Under your bunk there is no insulation from the side box doors, so it becomes close to whatever the outside ambient temperature is. The best thing is to buy about 3/8" to 1/2" CLOSED CELL foam pads from any outdoor recreational gear store. These are pads big enough to lay out a sleeping bag and sleep on snow. The closed cells will insulate far better than open cell foam, the soft compressible type. Buy two pads and cut them to fit the entire bunk UNDER your mattress. That will go a long way from preventing cold seeping up through your permeable mattress.

 

I am a old school driver that stopped in 2001. Before all the really plush plastic trucks with computer etc came in.

Engine never stopped in winter. In fact, the colder it got, say down to -50 I would have that engine running at 1500 idle on cruise set sitting still or redlined by stick with those non cruise controlled. Fuel is not a concern. Cost did not matter because it's cheaper to gurgle fuel into those tanks than it is to call out road service, replace filters, dead batteries, dispose of gelled fuel replace with fresh tanks etc etc etc etc.

When you run the engine you generate heat from the coolant which feeds the cab and sleeper. And it provides huge amounts of power to feed (And warm indirectly...) the batteries who will die in the cold. Im not current on battery tech, but the ones we had contained fluid that would simply fail to work when it's truly cold.

A dead truck = a dead driver shortly by exposure to freezing temps.

If a company is CHEAPING OUT on APU's there is no point really. You want big beef APU's that are STRONG and do what it needs to do on a fraction of the fuel that otherwise would be burnt by the big engine. I rather spend 10K a truck on a APU capable of heating and lighting Heaven's Scenes above if necessary than to try and spend 2K on a ####TY APU that is a waste of it's own existence.

The sleeper part of the cab is a challenge. Some tractors have a metal floor that is not that thick and exposed to the cold down below. That cold travels up through the metal constantly. Company bought matresses are not good quality. You put in your own thick good matress. Add two layers of foil emergency blankets below that matress, a layer of plastic against moisture convection, then a mexican blanket, matress on top of that. Matress has a covering against bed bugs and DNA skin infestations plus body fluids etc and good quality sheets of cotton (If there is a fire, cotton burns off, otherwise synthetic sheets will melt into your body causing big time problems...) and then big time blankets. On top of that all is two rectangular sleeping bags rated to -30 7 feet long. On top of that is 4 more mexican blankets to make a nest followed by two body length pillows of good quality.

When properly nested, two people will keep warm in the night insulated against the worst of cold, PROVIDED both have fluids and have eaten extremely well, something like 4 MRE's 3500 calorie each meals per person per day. That's 13000 calories or so, and most of it will be used by the body in keeping warm. But you cannot eat that much without working exceptionally hard, you will be obese in a hurry.

Winter is a joy to me. Something I crave in my bent mind particularly with storms and ice on mountains. I need that to be motivated. Winter is also a enemy. A mortal one. You can very easily lose your life for truly stupid reasons, some of which might be related to attempts by your company to save a dollar in fuel.

 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073HP15LR/_encoding=UTF8?coliid=I1G2J4UBZXQ4LG&colid=WPLOMM59WP6U&psc=1
and

 

I always kept a sleeping bag close by. I also slept in long johns some too. My largest complaint in winter was actually my bunk heater was too good. I just never was able to find that sweet spot setting. I almost always woke up either shivering or so hot I was sweating. My largest worry was always my cargo. I remember once picking up a load of beer in Williamsburg Va and could stand outside of the trailer and could hear the glass breaking inside and could see the liquid running out. I called (actually screamed) at my dispatch about it and all they said is this is what claims was about. The distributer did not accept the load and it really become a headache. This was before I started hauling reefer loads. Another thing about cold is sometimes it can get so cold you have to block the front of the grill just to keep the engine temps up. Back in the 60s my father actually had a running tractor freeze up on him because of this. Excessive cold like heat can be really hard on mechanical things.

 

It's cold out?

 

I know exactly where you were probably at. Busch.

I used to deliver Coil from Logan County KY to there. Im not certain where the Bottling was though.

The heater problem in the sleeper was solved when the tractors got equipped with quality blackout thermal blankets for the side windows, windshield etc. Deploy them, run the tractor heat and do not have the sleeper heat going down low. (The lower output closed off.) That improved things quite a bit.

I had metal break in bad cold. Steel becomes almost like glass. It's both awesome to see and scary too.