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this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2025
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Wish we got a more complete understanding of the truckers' side in this article - why is it so hard to turn off your engine instead of idling?
The guy quoted in the article says that some trucks need to operate their lift gates 15 or 20 times in a day. First of all, turn on your engine to operate the gate and then turn it off when you're done... Secondly, if it is impacting business too much to take that extra time to turn the engine on and off, invest in an auxiliary power source to operate the lift gate.
Maybe I'm missing something?
Former trucker. If it's hot or cold AF it sucks not having a or heat. If it's a hot day, it's way hotter on blacktop surrounded by hot engines.
It can be a pain to turn it on and off a bunch of times per day, I know it sounds minor, but when you're trying to keep track of a bunch of things, making sure the right cargo comes off or on in the right order in the right way, hitting multiple docks or stops in quick succession. Trying to claim the space you need and trip plan (a lot of people don't realize how difficult it can be to get a truck through a city, especially East Coast cities).
Then you get somewhere and hop out of your truck to check in, thinking it will take 30 seconds. Talk to whomever you may need to, clear obstacles and eyeball the space you need to get your trailer into. You'll run into clueless, apathetic and just all around useless fucks at every corner. The sort of people that make glaciers seem on point. 30 seconds can turn into 30 minutes real quick.
It's a tough gig, and having an army of mercenary profit driven people out there looking to make a buck off the guy delivering literally everything you need to survive that's not air (and sometimes even that too) is kinda bullshit.
Edit: I'm not endorsing excessive idling, just trying to give some perspective on why a driver may fail to turn it off.
And also that a policy that pays anyone to report it is suspect at best. Where are we drawing the line on that? Jaywalking? What about immigration? Who's to say I can't start a company that surveils and informs for profit? It's a slippery damn slope with nothing nice at the bottom. Enforcement should be done with paid public servants, full stop.
There's a lot of externalizing of costs going on. The trucks are idling because the drivers are operating at the slimmest possible margin under the assumption that idling doesn't cost anything.
What we actually would want to get to is that idling does have a cost (environmental, health, pleasantness of the area, etc). And that cost ought to be passed up the chain so that the various goods being shipped are more expensive.
But without a more centrally-managed economy, the implementation is to put all the pressure on the truck drivers and leave them responsible for passing that pressure to the next step up the chain. It doesn't work out very well in practice because the drivers need to make a bunch of capital expenses for something like adding a cab AC and adding a batter-powered lift, but they've been operating at low margins so they're not in a position to do it.
Local deliveries should be happening in electric vehicles. And 90% of long range trucks should have been a train. Go back in time a few decades and get the godless MBA having fucks out of the railroad industry.
Boom! Y'all should elect me king of everything, just solving problems left and right!
Including cargo bikes, not only electric box trucks.
Cargo bikes kinda suck for very heavy loads and terrain, theres a reason they used to be ubiquitous throughout China, but now everyone uses gas and electric.
*manual cargo bikes, you see a decent amount of 3+ wheeled electric or gas bike things carrying bikes, trash, veggies, w/e
You'll have my vote for king as soon as you provide the time machine to enact your plan
Local deliveries can be fixed in a few years with proper regulations, and that's giving a generous time span for businesses to adapt.
I think I seen some calculation where it said that an engine uses the same amount of fuel to start as it does to idle five minutes. I don't know if that was average, a specific engine, or if it referred to gas or diesel though.
I think that used to be true on older cars, but with modern passenger cars emissions/fuel use for start up is about the same as 10s of idle. No clue if that's true for these big diesel vehicles tho.
Idling diesel is supposed to be very bad but long haul trucks are better at it because they need to keep refrigeration running. Either way, something like 2 minutes of idle is almost universally worse.
You don't need a centrally managed economy, you just need ancient irish car maintenance wisdom.
Yeah that sucks, but that truck should be a train on a rail spur, and if we can punish anyone involved in making it not that, i am in favor.
Why do even countries that build train infrastructure transport most of their cargo with semi-trucks?
Because they dont want ro risk running into your mom, who can only be shipped by train.
The first 3 paragraphs are absolute garbage.
Your last one I get, but still, it's a job, delivering in a large metropolitan area sucks. Turning your engine off ain't that hard. Yes I've worked as a driver.
I'm not defending the practice of excessive idling, was just trying to give some perspective. Ty for calling it garbage tho, always nice to hear constructive feed back.
There are also older and jankier trucks still around which need the engine running for things like the lights and/or the hydraulic loading gate in the back to operate. Both these things are non-negotiable safety needs when loading or unloading a truck.
that's one interpretation. another could be "a group of people who care enough about the air quality of their neighborhood that they finally stand up for themselves".
To add to this as a Diesel mechanic,
Diesel engines are designed to operate continuously for the most part, the most wear and tear on the engines happen during start up and shut down.
They take large batteries and more effort to start so repeatedly doing that over and over in short intervals will lead to flat batteries and burnt out starter motors
Diesel engines run most efficiently I.e less pollution and better fuel economy when warm, cold engines cause more soot etc.
The engines wear poorly and develope carbon deposits from stop start operations too increasing fuel consumption and NOX emissions.
Lastly but certainly not the end of it is most Diesel trucks have what's known as a turbo timer, this keeps the engine running 2 minutes or more depending on settings after the ignition is turned off.
This allows oil flow around the turbo and prevents unnecessary heat damage to components.
Certainly if i applied some thought to this i could come up with more reasons and others could argue against but that's what I've got to say on the matter
I will only counter with one point. The smell of DEF in every city everywhere every morning, noon, and night. 🤮
We need something better than diesel.
Yeah all of those things do suck, we empathize with you. Just go ahead and turn off your engine though and avoid the fine.
My understanding is that turning off and on a diesel engine is not great for it or something like that. Sorry, my grandpa was a mechanic and I'm half remembering something he said.
Ya it's more wear and tear. It was more true with older engines than newer ones. Newer trucks have a more complex starting mechanism that's easier on the engine.
My grandpa drove a semi truck;
The A/C was part of it, some truck stops even had a thing called “IdleAir” that was like a window unit so you didn’t have to leave your engine running. For semis nobody wants to sleep in a sunbaked box with no air.
But according to him, for the really big engines, turning it off and on causes more wear and tear than leaving it running. So back in the day when diesel was still very cheap compared to gas they all got in the habit of leaving it on all the time.
Even the cops leave their cars on all the time where I am from.
Cops will leave their engines running because they may have to go into service at a moment notice. Not sure if I entirely agree the half second to fire up is going to slow their response considerably, but I'd error on the side of an exception for emergency equipment.
They don’t leave firetrucks running…
While I certainly agree with your overall point, I'd guess that firefighters have someone who's job it is to start the engine/truck while their fellows are donning their gear.
Let’s be honest though; Push-to-start exists. There is zero reason they can afford all their SWAT bullshit and can’t afford to make a car that auto starts when whoever is carrying the fob gets in.
Not that turning a key takes any longer than pushing a button
Also, fire trucks don't have a key to start. You set one knob to on and twist the starter knob.
If you're loading and unloading 20 times a day, you're doing local delivery and should probably be in an electric truck in the first place.
Sorry, but those don't exist in any appreciable amount in the US, unfortunately.
I've often wondered why trucks can't have a stop+start system integrated like many cars have these days. Wouldn't need to be a conscious action to kill the engine, just something that happens automatically when they park up.
That is wear and tear on your engine, and the meager benefits you get from that are far offset by the maintenance costs.
For example, my not so fuel friendly car has, over the course of 3 years, shut itself off at stop lights for over an hour and a half.
Through doing this an entire gallon of fuel has been saved.
Over 3 years.
It's engine down time is usually less than 10 seconds.
I get that it feels like this is a benefit if you have all of the cars everywhere doing it, but this ain't it. Even environmentally, the extra batteries we need to produce will be more harmful than the miniscule exhaust will be.
Service trucks will put many, many more miles on them in that 3 years than I will. Their idle time might be a great deal more if they're leaving it to idle while they go try to make a delivery. But, two things: those systems are ridiculously easy to turn off, by design, and diesel engines really don't like working that way. The wear and tear would be worse, more expensive, and more harmful.
I'm not saying throw your hands up and give up. I an saying that the service vehicles are the ones we actually should be making exceptions for. Even in a consumer car free society, we'll still need the service vehicles to do work.
You save 2 to 3 % on average and up to 7 % in pure city traffic.
Where are you that red lights are less than 10 seconds? Not many cars are going to get through a green light of below 10 seconds.
That just isn't supported by real world data. Manufacturers may claim that but they make a lot of claims that only apply to factory testing conditions.
Real world testing comes to the same conversion. 10 % saving in pure city traffic can be expected.
Only stopping for 1.5 hours on red lights over 3 years makes you an super extreme outlier. Now you don't specify the total distance in those 3 years, so perhaps you just don't drive at all, but realistically people drive something like 10'000 km per year, average speed around 50 km/h, time spent driving about 30'000 km / 50 km/h = 600 h. To only get to 1.5 hours at red lights would mean 10 seconds per hour of driving. I hope that makes it clear how unrealistic YOUR number is.
If every car in the US had auto stop and drove similar to yours, it would have stopped 190,000,000 pounds of CO2 from going into the atmosphere in those 3 years.
Extra batteries aren't required for Auto-stop. If battery wear was significantly faster due to the feature it wouldnt matter, batteries are much more recyclable than burnt gas.
I had auto-stop on my last car, and the battery made it 9 years before I finally had to replace it, and when the feature wasn't working (too cold out) it made a noticeable impact on my fuel economy, around 3-5 mpg.
one gallon over 60,000 miles. My guy, that just isn't the answer.
You're also assuming that it's only working at traffic lights. My auto stop would activate when the car was slowing down under 10mph. It also activates in car washes and when the car is parked.
But hey, fine, if saving 190 million pound of CO2 from entering the atmosphere buy turning off idling engines isn't the answer, what would you do to save that much CO2 from running ICE vehicles instead?
Air conditioning