Sleeping in truck in winter

i wish my company would out fit our trucks with APU. They say its not cost effective cause the price of fuel is lower again. When it was over $4 a gallon they were considering it. They are testing them out on a couple of trucks right now to see if they are cost effective cause the units they were looking at were about $10,000 a truck to install.

 

Yeah, they just leave out the tripac heater which is similar but not near as powerful. I would of thought the tripac had like a radiator heater. But my Volvo had a diesel fired heater that run off the tripac controls. The Espar has it's own controls.

The Espar consist of the heater box which includes the brain box. Then there is a thermostat, a rheostat switch and it's own regulated fuel pump. From the looks of it it's a fairly easy installation.

Maybe they were just added it at the dealer and not the factory??

 

When fuel consumption is 10X greater idling, they pay for themselves in 1-2 years. My APU is about 5 years old and requires very little maintainance and I've had minimal problems. They are well built.

 

Oh I know thats the reason I keep all the other stuff with me. I was stuck up at bitter creek fotr 2 days twice this past winter the one night it was 35 below. Had yummy homemade chicken noddle soup. Road stayed closed the whole time. no movement out there at all. But I was toasty warm!!!

 

Your company most likely gets to take that cost off on their taxes. Most companies just dont care about the driver. But bet they have ac and heat and showers in their house while you suffer. Now if I can get my company to put a shower and toilet in here I will be a happy camper!!!

 

I just do what I gotta do....LOL

 

There is nothing more soothing then sleeping in a warm truck during winter. I can't wake up for #### when it's raining.

 

Which company has the latest or newest freightliners? I've been seeing a lot of KW's lately.

 

So it's been about 5 years since this thread has gotten a lot of love.

Has much changed regarding APUs and inverters? I hear some people swear by them, and some people hate them. And do most company trucks have them installed?

 

No most companies do not have them installed, but in my opinion from what I can tell and I run all 48 states and major portions of Canada, I would say in my opinion its 50%APU and 50% with no APU...the trend however is companies are installing them more, just at a bean counters rate is all. I like the APU's made by Tri-Pak and if they put the Artic Package with it that is best of course thats my opinion and observation over the years. If they don't want to install APU's then they should at a minimum be installing auto-starts which automatically start and shutdown the motor for keeping batteries up, and driver comforts there,and these of course for the most part have a switch which lets the driver decide to turn the auto start on, like for hometime off, or comforts. The only issue is some states/areas are becoming no idle zones. So you have to pick, just giving ya my 2-cents on it all over the years, in my opinion a TriPak APU with the Artic Package, and interconnected with an inverter in the truck(APU keeps inverter up and goes back to regualar when the truck is running/driven) is the best, if it ever failed you can always start the big heater up, of course if you drive for a company that doesnt want to keep APU an equipment serviced then you may want to reconsider the cheapo option.