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COOL CHOICE ON AIRCON
Page 60
Page 61
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Your drivers can't overheat like a truck, but you don't want them wasting precious diesel with air-con. Brian Weatherley finds out how even your accountant can chill out.
It's a sign of the times (and global warming) that more and more tractors sold in the UK are fitted with climate control or air conditioning as standard.And not just on topof-the-range flagship motors either. In a bid to keep their drivers cool —and from defecting to a rival operator down the road—general hauliers are increasingly speccing air-con on their fleet machines.
Given that fact you'd think anyone offering an aftermarket air-eon unit would be in for a cool reception. H owever,Andy Harris, boss of Daventry-based accessories company Roadpro, insists that factory-fitted air-con has clear limitations.
Cool days, hot nights
"The trouble with engine-driven air-con is that while it's great on the move you can't really use it when you're parked up as no sensible person wants their truck idling all night — it would be noisy, polluting and you'd be wasting fuel," says Harris, who maintains that keeping cool at night is vital for anyone sleeping in a truck cab during the summer: "If they can't sleep because of the heat they're not going to be performing very well the next day."And a tired driver is probably not going to be concentrating 100% when it counts, out on the road. With engine-driven air-conditioning, when a driver takes a break during the day, he'll inevitably keep his engine running in order to power the air-con.And that's going to burn up precious diesel, never mind what excessive idling does to engine longevity.
As an alternative, Roadpro is now offering a range of Dutch-made 12 and 24-volt DC Airco cab roof-mounted air conditioning units that give a driver air-con -hut independent of the truck engine.
The DC4400 has a 4,760BTEJ/h cooling output and runs off the truck's normal starter batteries, having a 6.25A hourly consumption based on a 50% duty cycle which rises to 12.5A on maximum power. it also comes with a low-voltage cut-out switch to prevent discharging the battery below its required voltage to start the engine.
"With a typical 220Ah battery there's plenty of power," says Ilarris. The roofmounted DC4400 can be fitted to a cab in 4-5 hours using the normal roof hatch openingif it hasn't got one you need a hole measuring 360x360mm. It weighs 30kg and costs .£1,759 including VAT.
Best value
While Harris says there are cheaper evaporate cooler' units on the market, costing around the £900 mark, he cautions that they have limitations when humidity levels rise: "They're tine in, say, Madrid but operators need to understand that white they may be cheaper they don't work as well in air around 60% humidity and above.
"People should be aware of what they're buying. When you buy a so-called cheaper unit if it doesn't work as well you can't really say 'well at least I've saved £1,000?"
As the operator case study shows, if you are considering speecing air-con and you need to run it overnight, a stand-alone unit could well be a more cost-effective solution than an engine-driven unit, especially if every drop of diesel counts.