Several years ago, I worked for a company
as a transport driver. It involved driving
newly manufactured/modified trucks to their dealers
from Elkart, Indianna. Most of these vehicals
were for Fedex, UPS, Penske, and a few other truck
rental companies. My route was to the east coast.
It sure was a different way of life on the road:
Going from truckstop tp truckstop where I would
do laundry, eat (pretty decent food in large
quantities at reasonable prices), sleep (I would
string out a hammock in the rear of the truck
and sleep there).
Well, I could go on with this but back to the issue of
cold temp diesel starts. The thing I saw was that
most drivers simply did not turn off their engines.
They just set them to slow idle. This providied the needed
heat in the cab and used relatively little fuel.
If I was you guys I would go for the deisel and just not
shut it off (except for a few min to refuel, etc).
Also, if you are renting and driving a truck with
airbrakes and other features, you need a class II
license (if I recall correctly).
On Tue, Mar 05, 2002 at 07:59:04PM -0500, Roger Merchberger wrote:
<<snip>>
I never said diesels are bad -- I just said that they
don't start for $*it
in the cold, especially if they have a big engine... And the thread started
about people who'd prolly never run a diesel before, and would only run it
for a weekend or maybe a week - by the time the started learning the
quirks, they'd have gotten a *big* education, then arrived at their
destination.
<<snip>>
--
Bill
Amsterdam, NL