Do you run your reefer when in a dock?

Duck

Sarcastic remark goes here
The air chute across the ceiling carries the cold air to the rear, then it flows across the freight & gets sucked back into the unit down near the floor in front.

When in a dock, the refrigerated air is blown straight into the warehouse. Most loading areas are kept at temps in the 30's or 40's so if your set point is below that, you are using your reefer fuel to cool their warehouse while drawing in their warmer air across the freight in the trailer.

These places that tell you to keep your reefer on while in the dock are just trying to get free refrigeration for their facility.

And because you are giving them free refrigeration, they have one less reason to hurry up & get you loaded or unloaded.

I never give customers free refrigeration.

In fact, I shut off the unit before I even open the doors because when you have the doors open & the unit running, you're just sucking in outside air. If it is hot outside you are thawing the load. If it's humid outside you're bringing in moisture that will freeze & cover the freight with frost.

Why don't the carriers teach this to their drivers?

If I owned a reefer fleet I'd have pin-switches installed on the right trailer door that shuts off the unit when the doors are open. And my drivers would be instructed that when asked by a customer about it, to say "providing refrigeration for your warehouse is not included in the rate".
 
Prime had those door switches on some of their trailers. The fuses had a bad habit of blowing at the absolute worst times and the unit wouldn't run at all. They ended up jumping the connections on most of them and bypassing the switches altogether.

As for refrigerating an entire warehouse with your trailer, stop being ridiculous.

Your other points are valid and hold water. Prime wants their units off while docked for the exact reasons you outlined. (except the free cooling garbage)

You are spot-on with the statement of pulling warm air over a temp-controlled load. Warm air is pulled from the bottom, between the metal ribs. Cool air is pumped out across the top and through the chute, if the trailer is equipped with one. Warm air rises. As the unit pulls in the warm air, it rises through the load on its way forward to the cooling unit. Leave the unit on and it won't take long to ruin an entire load of ice cream.

WalMart had to buy a few loads of ice cream from Prime after the drivers showed up on time, reefers were turned off per WalMart policy and it took four hours to unload five or six pallets. The rest of the load got too warm in the Oklahoma heat.

While I was still with Prime, WalMart placed a priority on ice cream loads. They got tired of buying it.
 
Just think about it for 3 whole seconds.

Big warehouse with 50 trucks backed in, dock doors open, all those units running at full throttle trying to cool the load, blowing their cold air straight into the warehouse, for hours at a time per truck.

If you don't think that's gonna cool the dock area enough to lower their energy consumption, refrigeration costs, & make them look more "green" to the EPA you're insane.
 
No, I don't think it's going to make much difference. Like @SkateBoard pointed out when we were discussing air conditioners, the immediate area around the trailer doors might be lowered a degree, but it will not make a bit of difference elsewhere. I do leave my unit running when I'm making an intermediate delivery to a store. My center compartment is set for -20. The rear compartment does not get any cooler with the bulkhead up. Aside from the initial fog cloud going onto the dock, there is no change to dock area in temperature. Some of these dock areas are pretty small.
 
No, I don't think it's going to make much difference. Like @SkateBoard pointed out when we were discussing air conditioners, the immediate area around the trailer doors might be lowered a degree, but it will not make a bit of difference elsewhere. I do leave my unit running when I'm making an intermediate delivery to a store. My center compartment is set for -20. The rear compartment does not get any cooler with the bulkhead up. Aside from the initial fog cloud going onto the dock, there is no change to dock area in temperature. Some of these dock areas are pretty small.
:coocoo:
 
Neh. Not nuts. It's too much of a pain to reset three compartment temps every single stop. Last stop, I turn the whole trailer off. When I unload at a store, the door is only up for a maximum of a half hour. They take their crap off and I button it up and leave. I'm not sitting for hours at a shipper or DC waiting for union workers to get off their asses.

When I ran OTR refrigerated, they'd get a precooled trailer that was turned off.

...and just because somebody disagrees with you from personal experience, they are not necessarily nuts. Having a conversation with a waterfowl, however, might be cause for concern..
 
Not :coocoo: because of your compartmentalized whatchamahoogies.

:coocoo: because you don't think a bunch of diesel powered freezers blowing directly into dock doors will affect the temperature in there.
 
My Reefer exp is pretty limited. I only hauled reefer cans to pick up ice cream. This is some funny rookie shit. I had the reefer going from the time it was set on my chassis, I show up to the pick up point and there is ten of our drivers sitting there waiting on the box to reach temp.
I walked into shipping and said where do I back in? The guy was like you need to be at this temp, I am at that temp. No shit? No shit!
Holy crap, You are. back in over there. The other drivers only started their reefers when they got to the customers.
I know this is not the original question but it makes me laugh.

I have been to other places where they want my keys and then get all shell shocked when my APU starts up. Candy assses!

LOL. I delivered to a Walmart way up north in Canada and it was bitch ass cold. They where like can you leave the heater on while we unload? It's cold. Nope! The heater is there to keep the freight from freezing, Nobody cares if you freeze. Just ask the store manager. LOL.
And they call me a cold hearted sum bitch.
 
My "A" company's procedure for delivering ice cream is you shut the unit off, open doors & back into dock. Leave unit off. Product in trailer will stay cold longer with the unit off than with it running with the doors open. I already explained why.

If there's no forklift activity within 15 minutes, go find out why. If not forklift activity in 25 minutes, pull out of dock, close doors, turn reefer back on & call dispatch.
 
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I did have like a pallet of something go bad gorgot what it was but I dont think they cared just the company took a few 50s
 
Turn it off and you run the risk of a refused load.

Never turn the reefer off until told to do so by the receiver.

Don't make a fatal mistake thinking you are being a good conservationist. It's not your dime, it's not a decision a driver gets to make.... Check your BOL.... If there is any verbiage that gives you authority to determine when and how... Go right ahead.
 
Open the doors and all you are doing is sucking I. Warm air from the gap under the doors.

Why do you think you defrost so dang much sitting on the docks. All you are doing ng is icing up the evaporator causing it to go into defrost mode.
 

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