Choosing a Microwave for Your Truck

One of the best decisions we made in our trucking career was choosing a microwave for our truck. Having a microwave in the truck allows for a much for varied diet.

While some truckers I know prepare their food ahead of time, this works well for people on dedicated runs, those who run OTR need to be able to put things together from ingredients they have available.

Some standard types of items to keep in your truck would be things like spices you like and canned items that can be heated up.  But you are not relegated to simply eating reheated foods even if you aren't a gourmet cook.

When you choose your microwave for your truck, you need to keep in mind how much power it is going to draw and make sure to get an inverter that will handle that much power. (You can check out this article about installing the microwave here).  How much power/wattage  your microwave had will be the biggest obstacle when it comes to choosing what you are able to prepare in the way of food.

The lower end microwaves don't have enough power to pop popcorn or heat water sufficiently to make things like minute rice or boil noodles.  Getting a microwave and inverter that can handle heating for several minutes opens up your menu options considerably.

You might also want to invest in a microwave cook book.  

If you are only cooking for one person, heating up meals is perfectly fine. Make ahead meals can be frozen, or at least portions of them can be frozen, then reheated in the microwave for a healthy meal on the road. We all know that trying to eat on the road, outside of what you have prepared is a) expensive and b) really not good for you.

Here are a selection of microwaves that you might consider for your truck:

Choosing and Installing a Power Inverter in Your Freightliner

One of the first things you will need to know when it comes to having a microwave in your truck is how to connect a more powerful power inverter to your truck batteries.

This is a good over view of how to set it up. A simple way to find the proper cables is to simply purchase some jumper cables. They work fine.



You will also need to know what size inverter to purchase in order to operate the appliances you wish to run in your truck. This following video lays out how to find how much power you will need:

Now that was easy right?  Having a good sized power inverter in your truck will allow you to not only have hot food on demand but also watch tv, run a computer or even have a more heavy duty refrigerator.

Trucking In the Winter

Trucking in the winter is always an adventure. When truck driver Dave (my husband) and I first started driving winter scared the begeezes out of us!

I still have nightmares about the night I drove through the gorge in North Carolina when it was snowing, the ice was packed on the road and the 4 wheelers where trying to get killed.  There is a narrow bridge and a little truck right in the center going way slower than even I was driving.  To this day I'm thinking it was an act of God that I didn't plow right into him.

Some how I managed to slide, and believe me we were sliding, right around him.

These days, though I no longer drive, my husband kind of looks forward to winter. All of the motor homes are safely tucked away for the season, road crews rarely feel the need to wander out to "fix" stuff and snow doesn't usually last too long as one seems to drive though and then out of it.

If you are a trucker, trucking in the winter, be safe, go slow...no load is worth your life.

Staying Connected Cell Phone For Truckers

When we first started in the trucking world, oh so many years ago, cell phones were just starting to make their appearance.  In fact when our son was born, my husband, who was, of course, on the road, called from a payphone to check on the progress.  His timing was perfect, our son had just been born.

As time has progressed we have found that Verizon is probably the best carrier for truckers followed by TMobile. That is just my opinion. Since our change over to Verizon and the advent of iphones while we used to have to have GPS and a laptop, and a tv, all of those "extra" needs have sort of disappeared.

It is actually cheaper for us to use the streaming data from Verizon rather than trying to get truck stop internet, which almost never works.

Love this cell phone for truckers when it comes to staying connected with loved ones.

A cell phone and one that functions as a computer too is almost a necessity these days in the trucking world. Where before there were payphones everywhere, these days it is getting more and more difficult to find one.

Having a cell phone allows you to take advantage of GPS apps, watch tv online and so much more. If you aren't using the best, most up to date technology you are falling behind and it is costing you money.

Over The Road Trucking News

Welcome to my little corner

Hello and welcome to my little corner of the blogosphere. My name is Jeff and I am an over the road truck driver trainer for C.R. England which is the largest refrigerated truckload carrier in the U.S. – according to C.R. England themselves. I have decided to start blogging as sort of a tribute to my last year in trucking as well as to assist anyone who might be thinking of getting into this wild and wooly field. I have been a driver since the spring of ’96 and a trainer for the overwhelming majority of that time. One of the things that I noticed when I (and my lovely wife who drove with me in the beginning) were investigating this field and one of the things that I often hear from my apprentices is how difficult it is to get accurate info on this kind of job from the outside – especially what it is like living life “on the road”. So, I am gonna do this in an effort to educate, entertain and shamelessly pander to advertising dollars.. J The format will be sort of a daily diary sort of thing (but probably not every day as that would be entirely too structured for my crazy life) interspersed with a good deal of commentary on the industry, lifestyle and anything else that might (or might not) be remotely interesting. Okay, hang onto your hats -- here we go…

3 March, 2009 – We began the day in a highway “rest area” on I-44 in Missouri (which I affectionately call “Misery”) after I had shut down for the night last nite at 1 am or so. We loaded out of the Chicago area yesterday afternoon on a load that delivers in Laredo, Texas at 8am tomorrow. Right now I have a student who is really an early bird so I have been leaving him a note telling him where we are and which way to head. So he’s been getting up at around 4am and taking off shortly thereafter. You might say, wow, that’s only 3 hours of sleep. Yup. I have decided that I will do this blog thing with non-truckers in mind. So I will have to ‘splain that according to DOT regulations, truck drivers may drive 11 hours during a 14 hour “window” every “day” (sort of) and then they must “rest” 10 hours before they can drive again. This rest period can be in “the sleeper” which is the bunk area of the truck or anywhere outside the truck. My truck has two bunkbeds in the back so a “team” (we’re introducing all kinds of terminology here) can sleep (or not) without getting overly friendly. So, in trucking, “team” driving is where 2 people share a truck so that truck can keep moving continuously and stay compliant with the regulations. This allows two drivers to legally move freight far and fast. So, with a trainee and a little caffeine I can go coast to coast in about 2 and a half days. But in this case we had a little time to stop and get a little “motion free” sleep and still make our delivery appointment and that really helps me at this point. One of the really dangerous things about team driving is the expectation that teams should be able to drive all night and as I get older (I’m 47) it has become more and more of an issue – especially with the crumbling infrastructure that we seem to hear so much about. A lot of roads are bad and you really can’t sleep on them much. But shippers are generally paying extra on team loads for fast service and I am also getting paid very well (we’ll get into that at some point) for getting it there on time. But, as you can imagine, fatigue becomes an issue. So, you gotta be careful and shut it down when you can. If you are the prayin’ type you can pray for me – I’ll take all the help I can get… J

The day itself was relatively uneventful. My student drove down I-44 then took U.S. 69/75 to Dallas then 35 south to Italy, Texas where there is a nice little truckstop with a McDonalds and some stuff around it. I drove during the evening through Austin and San Antone before shutting it down again about an hour from Laredo at around midnite. I didn’t figure it out exactly but we did about 800 miles for the day which is about average for days that we are under a load. It was a nice warm evening after freezing our you-know-what’s off up in Chicagoland. I got out and walked around a bit before I crashed (maybe I shouldn’t use that term). The Milky Way was on full display and was quiet and beautiful out in the middle of nowhere. See, there are things I like about this job… J