Indian River Transport- The journey begins

Awesome man. That makes me relieved and happy to have made the move. Drug test finally came back, got my truck and am loading at a dairy in Amherst, Texas tomorrow for a Ft Worth delivery. They swapped trucks on me from the one I took my test in and thought I was getting. I ended up with a 2014 Pete that has 103,000 miles on it. The wife and I got us a motel for the night in Clovis.

 

Yeah I actually came out ahead on the truck swap because the one I road tested in and thought I was getting had 282,000 miles. Finally got moved into the truck. The wife and I cleaned on it for awhile, got my radio hooked up, bedding in, etc. Hey if you're ever in Clovis there's a laundry mat in town you can drop your clothes off at. We had 14 pounds. They washed, dried, and folded it within 3 hours for $21.25.

 

That's the nice thing about having the wife riding shotgun lol. Driving the truck is my department. Laundry and making sandwiches is her dept.

 

Got a question about the fridge, as I have never had a truck equipped with one. Can you leave it on with the truck shut off or will it drain the batteries?

 

That ain't bad, guy! Love hearing good news. Hope it keeps coming. Keep us updated!

Depends on the truck, and the fridge.

If it's a solid state cooler, you can expect some longevity out of any trucks batteries. Those solid state coolers do a pretty good job, and pull anywhere from 30-60 watts/hour. A fridge using a compressor is using anywhere from 2-5 times, the same amount.

As for the truck, FL/international uses cheapy batteries that won't support that sort of drain from a fridge using a compressor for more than 4-8 hours, depending on the age and condition of the batteries. It really depends on how many times they've been deep-discharged. Every time you pull a battery to completely flat, it chemically changes the state of the electrolyte that provides power in the battery. Best way to deal with this is an APU/company that lets you idle/your own truck.


I've personally found that the best way to protect your own food, when a battery runs flat, or the voltage sensor cuts the battery off, is to have a pound or two of solid ice stored in cooler itself. It will maintain the temperature and allow you to get away with about 4-8 hours of the cooling unit not running, regardless of whether it's a solid state or compressor type cooler, it will keep your food cool for an extra couple of hours and re-freeze itself while you're running- I found a Tupperware container worked amazingly. Another interesting factoid is making it lightly diluted salt water. Salt water freezes at lower temperatures, and yet it manages to transfer additional cooling effort in the area it's stored. I've found 1 litre of saltwater (dilution of 5 tbs of salt per gallon) would keep my food cooler, when near frozen, than 1 gallon of pure water would, over a period of around 5 hours. I'm assuming that is because the saltwater never completely froze, rather; it stayed in a sort of chunky/flaky state, which more readily dissipated it's lower temperature into the cooler rather than a solid chunk of ice.

Sorry for temporarily hijacking your thread, deadhead; but I'm a fat guy- and food is important to me .