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You want to make money driving a truck? Learn how to save it.

The number one expense on the road is food. You can save up to 75% off daily food expenditures by having a thermometric cooler or fridge, but I would wholeheartedly recommend the cooler over a fridge.

Just a few reasons why: (ex: Coleman 40qt)

1. Way more space. Less shit in the way. You take out the shelf and fan cover. And don't have to deal with the cluttered layers and small freezer that can't hold anything of value.
   
   
2. It still functions as a freezer. Spray the heat sink with DuPont's Teflon anti-frost / anti freeze spray and let it air out. WD 40 works in this capacity as well. Lay down some paper towels and use some q-tips to get all the nooks and crannies. Let it air out before stocking it. This process will provide several extra weeks before a defrost is required as well as let the wall closest to the fan turn into a freezer. Make sure to leave a path way down the middle so the fan can do its job. keep any drinks to the 1/2 gallon of milk size. condiments and meats like portioned chicken can be against the freeze wall. Lunch meats and cheeses can be vertical in the middle section without issue, keep an eye out for any water. Would recommend sticking to quality with any bags, Ziploc is the only brand I use out on the road as leaks can ruin an entire cooler of produce.
   
   How I stack it with bonus pics of the rest of the truck
   
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   A couple other things I would add are a carpet and a Queen sized fleece blanket for the back wall. You can cut any of the area rugs at Walmart in half and they will fit the truck perfectly after trimming for corners and cut lines for the seat straps. The fleece for the back wall can be anchored under the bunk mattress and netting while tucking sides in the back wall cushioned paneling. You should also pick up a mattress cushion, cut to fit and use the scraps to protect the tv from the wall features of the truck.

Tire chain tools:

Chaindawg, purchase


cheater chains you can build these yourself at any hardware store for $5. They're good for driving around yards, getting out of a dock that you're stuck in our getting unstuck from being parked all night after a snowfall or due to sinking into ice. These are not a replacement for chaining up under a chain law, I keep a few sets of these in my bag. All they are is a length of chain with a simple hook like on your tire chains.


another example of cheater chains


other tools that are available

cam tool this is my favorite style of tightening tool as it's easier to use in the back. I've seen one sold in some backwoods truck stop that had a handle like a socket wrench. I've been looking for it since last year, wish I bought it when I saw it.

Fifth wheel pull hook it's useful for putting on a set of singles. reach through between the tires and pull the chain end through so you can hook it before driving over them.

chainpro still haven't seen it for sale anywhere

I've seen some pretty cool hand tools over the years at truck stops to help with chaining up. Kind of wish I picked some of them up as they don't seem to be easy to find online.

Otherwise there's a lot of gimmicks out there.

You can get an Android tablet for a fraction of the cost of a dedicated GPS, and the Android software is generally kept up to date and cheaper than the dedicated units. I've also heard the cheaper truck units Don't actually have an update function, so whatever is on it when you get it is what you have. Even if that GPS has been sitting in the back of TA's electronics case since 2012.

This Android tablet is $40, has just enough storage and ram to do the job. I wouldn't recommend relying on something this awful, but it could get the job done. Copilot without the bells and whistles is free, and takes about 2GB of space to download all the maps and stuff

So, for $40 you could have a working GPS solution. Who gives a flying if it gets hot, it's $40.

With my less crappy tablets, they stay cool enough if you just keep the AC going in summer (or windows open) and take them out of the window when you're not driving. I'm only replacing my tablet now, because my old LG tablet (which was already used, and was used by my friend to do reposessions. So it's been used as a GPS since 2010) because the amount of time it took to get a lock and calculate a route was annoyingly long and it was starting to crash randomly (again, after almost 10 years of daily GPS use).

But you're right about not using Google Maps; CoPilot, roadhunter, sygic, Truckmap, smarttruckroute2, DAT+, and tons of other truck GPS applications are in Google play. Best to use Gmaps to find the entrance to the plant, then copy the coordinates into your trucking app of choice. Heck, I'd say it's a good idea if you're using a physical GPS as well.

>Any advice? I love the bulbs but I don’t want to be a complete douche.

Thanks for being considerate. We all thank you.

>These are the ones I got: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01KYZU604?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

No offense, but I took a look at these bulbs and they are literally the worst LED bulbs you can get on the market today. The placement and size of the LED chips in no way, shape, or form even approximates that of a halogen bulb's filament. The H11 LED bulb has two LED chips side-by-side, while a H11 halogen bulb has a longitudinal filament (goes up and down, not side-to-side). That's why they're jizzing light all over the place and causing people to flash you; the LED bulb doesn't even resemble the halogen bulb it replaced on a fundamental level.

>I’ve heard you can adjust the angle to make them less blinding but haven’t found any how-to guides.

You can certainly adjust your lamps downward to get rid of glare, but remember: when you adjust your headlamps down, you lose seeing distance. Think of how a cop can shine his flashlight in your face. That's all glare right there. He can certainly adjust his flashlight down and reduce glare for you, but he'd be less able to see further in the distance and less able to see your face. There's a trade-off between glare and seeing distance. Choosing proper halogen bulbs helps you maximize seeing distance while minimizing glare.

>My night time visibility is fantastic.

No offense but that's what you think. The reality is that LED bulbs don't actually improve nighttime visibility. What LEDs do is flood the foreground (10 to 26 feet in front of your vehicle) with light, and this creates the perception that your lights are great. In reality, light 10-26 feet in front of any car is useless unless driving at 5 MPH or below.

https://www.sae.org/publications/technical-papers/content/2019-01-0850/

>Several different LED replacement bulb kits, each designed to replace a conventional 55-W H11 halogen bulb, were purchased and tested in three different low-beam headlight units. [...] These findings suggest that using after-market LEDs to replace halogen bulbs can compromise headlighting performance.

I'll summarize the study if you don't have access: The researchers purchased 9 different LED bulbs from Amazon, and some of them look pretty much identical to the ones you got. They put these 9 different LED bulbs in 3 different headlamps--two reflectors and one projector.

And guess what?

It was a bloodbath.

27/27 LED bulb+headlamp combinations failed a very basic and limited test of glare and seeing distance. 27/27 LED bulbs+headlamp combinations created excessive glare, less seeing distance, or both versus a basic halogen bulb.

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My best advice to you is to remove the LED bulbs, send them back to Amazon for a full refund, and swap in high-performance halogen bulbs to a) reduce glare and b) increase seeing distance. Do you have sealed beams? You said it was an older truck. If you have sealed beams, then there are plenty of legitimate LED headlamp options out there--none of this Auxbeam crap.

I have been very happy with Falcon Zero Touch PRO HD Dash Cam [TOUCH SCREEN] 1080p 24/7 Surveillance, Multi Vehicle Use, 32 GB SD Card Included. Bought off Amazon in December. Super easy to use and take in and out of truck. Bit pricier than some https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01LYGO3QH/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1 Has a very nice picture and touch screen. Takes excellent night pictures.

Jabra Evolve 65 Ms Mono

Very comfortable. Low profile. Easy, big volume and call pickup/reject buttons. 10 hour talk time. Much longer standby time. Your mileage may vary. Very good speaker sound quality. Excellent noise reduction - other end can’t tell you’re in a noisy truck with the windows open.

I’ve tried many (but not Blue Parrot) headsets. Most are less comfortable or sound muffled, etc.

This headset also works great with Skype and can be connected to your phone and laptop at the same time.

Highly recommend this one. I use it in my pickup and the suction cup one in my truck. Both are great but this one makes me very happy. Speed. Gps. 1080p at 60fps. It even has pitch and yaw. Very good. And sound is great. Though i turn off sound in truck because if im listening to a podcast a lawyer will say i was distracted when the drunk ran a red light and hit my trailer. It can also take a 128gb sd card so you can get almost 3 days with 720p at 30 fps. Roav DashCam S1, by Anker, Dash Cam, Dashboard Camera, Full HD 1080p Resolution @60 fps, Nighthawk Vision, Sony Starvis Sensor, Built-in GPS, Wi-Fi, Wide-Angle Lens, 2-Port Charger, 32GB microSD Card https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07DF8MQX1/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_ISsUCb4GMYH7W

For me the biggest barriers are weather and my irregular schedule. Sometimes it's just too windy, cold, or rainy to do anything outside. Some days I feel like working out but don't have time. Other days I have the time but don't feel like working out. So three variables have to come together: weather, free time, and energy level.


Lately I've been doing better though. I started doing isometric exercises in the truck, which I can do in any weather (I have a Steel Bow and Iso Bow). If the weather's nice I use my pushup stands and dumbbells, along with jumping jacks.


The food, though - obtaining healthy food is a definite problem.

Not a trucker, but I did have twin girls 7 years ago.

I worked full time, wife was a stay at home mom. But I still couldn't expect her to take every feeding.

Our girls were born 4 weeks preemie and were on a strict every 3 hours feeding schedule. We did it on the 3's. 3pm, 6pm, 9pm, 12pm, 3am, etc

Typically my wife would hit the sack and I'd take the first feeding, so 9pm. So she could sleep 6 to midnight and at least get a solid 6 hours. Then after I fed the girls (it would take at least an hour because of 2 of them and being fussy premature babies) I'd sleep 10pm until 4:30 when I had to get up to go to work.

It sucked, it was extremely stressful for both of us, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. Wear earplugs and get an eye mask. I started wearing an eye mask about a year ago and it makes a massive difference in what you can sleep through. You feel like a dork at first, but its led to much better sleep for me. I no longer wake up every time she gets up to use the bathroom or a truck goes by the house.

I have about a 90 minute commute to work, and there are still times now and then when I have to pull off the road and get some extra sleep. I think that just comes with getting older as well, I just can't do the sleep deprivation as easily as I could before.

I HIGHLY recommend this book - https://www.amazon.com/Healthy-Sleep-Habits-Happy-Child-ebook/dp/B015VACHBS It helped us immensely in getting our girls onto a good sleep schedule as soon as possible.

Once they hit about 3 months, use a needle and a lighter, heat the needle up and widen out the nipple on a bottle a little bit. Mix in some baby cereal or baby oatmeal in with the milk or formula. If using formula, mix it at 1.5x strength, for the before bed feeding as well. The extra calories will knock them out and keep them out a lot longer.

It gets better. My girls have been sleeping 7:30pm to 7:30am since they were around 1 year. At 7, they put themselves to bed at 7:30pm on school nights and my wife gets them up at 6:30 for school.

I second throwing out that junk mattress and getting something better. I got a memory foam mattress off Amazon and I love it. In fact I like it even better than the mattress that's on my bed at home and I'm considering replacing it with the same mattress in the bigger size.

I dont use a microwave but an aroma egg shaped rice cooker

I buy broths, fresh veggies, spices and meats and make stews and soups. You can also do that with a slow cooker or crock pot if you dont want to spend the money on the rice cooker.

Also I have an electric skillet. I fry up burgers, pork chops etc occasionally. Not too often because that often leaves truck smelling like cooked meat for 3 days afterwards.

I fry up a couple pounds of bacon at home and put them in ziploc then the fridge. Then I buy half a dozen eggs and get a small 1 or 2 cup Tupperware container. Scramble a couple eggs and salt/pepper and maybe a slice of provolone. Nuke it for a couple minutes with a slice or 2 of bacon. Makes tasty quick breakfast.

Jerkey is a bit cheaper in Walmarts compared to truckstops. Also, pepperoni and cheese cubes make an awesome snack when you don't have time to cook.

I use these. They have an alloy toe and have held up really well. They provide great traction on slippery floors such as those found in kitchens and ramps that come off the back of trucks. They're also really comfortable and not a bad deal at $75.

Skechers for Work Men's Synergy Ekron Walking Shoe,Black/Lime,12 M US

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00YHZ1SH8/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apap_yzFYgsfPUinzm

May i suggest a nice table, it fits perfectly in front of the bed between the shelves
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B018245UXC/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

And get a swing arm for your TV, tons of options on amazon.

If you don't mind, I recommend to you a rearview mirror dash cam with dual lens https://www.amazon.com/Mirror-Dash-Cam-Backup-Camera/dp/B07CBVR8R8, you can install the backup camera in the car. The important thing is that it includes SD card, Save money! Even better, there are 30% discounts now. code: QZSII6BU. Last week, I used this code to buy 2 mirror dash cam for me and my husband.

Becoming A Truck Driver: The Raw Truth About Truck Driving:: Thinking Of Becoming a Truck Driver? You MUST Read This Book First. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E0KSOI/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_IoizDb3BH2QC2

Read this first. It's a great book alot of insight on the world of trucking.

https://www.amazon.com/Garmin-DezlCam-LMTHD-6-Inch-Navigator/dp/B010D2URZC i hear this one is pretty cool.

i plan on getting it when i get my CDL and all that