New to trucking. I seen inverters as cheap as 30 bucks to as high as 400 bucks. Whats the difference between them? Is there anything specific I should look for? Probably just be recharging laptop batteries.

 

Your choice of inverter depends on your need, if all you want to do is run your laptop, a cheap one will do, most laptop chargers are only a 60 to 75 watt draw. Just keep in mind a cheap inverter will do the job, but you won't have the regularity and consistency of your houses power, but most inverters even the cheap ones should be decent enough to not give you any problems.

 

I bought a Cobra 1500/3000 watt inverter tonight at Peterbilt in Des Moines for $109.95

 

There could be a lot of differences in between them.

Power output
Built in "filters" for noise and power output
Cooling ability

and the list goes on.

Generally speaking inverters up to 400 watt can be plugged into a 12v socket. Anything over 400 watts will need to be hardwired into the vehicle batteries.

 

Uturn2001,

Are you aware of how to figure out the watts of an appliance to determine how big of an inverter I would need? Running everything at the same time is unrealistic, but let's say I had a coleman cooler plugged into the cig lighter, don't have an apu and want to run a burton oven, crock pot or microwave seperatley? What's the normal size inverter that everyone is using to supply the listed appliances. Thanks and appreciate you posting.

 

All inverters are rated by watts, you should never exceed the maximum constant draw rating of the inverter, most microwaves are going to be 700 up to 1500 watt constant draw, but they also have a huge peak draw too, if you want to go with a microwave find one with the smallest peak and normal watt draw, just because it says 650 watt microwave on the front of the box, doesn't mean that is its power draw, you need to read its specs, crock pots pull very little watts, usually 100 to 300 at most. If you really want to run a microwave and a few other things, I would go with a 1500 watt, which would have to be direct wired to your batteries.

 

So . . what is the problem with hard wired inverters? Swift, among others, prohibits them. What is so complicated about a fireproof inverter installation?

 

It's not that complicated, when I was with swift I had an 800 watt I direct wired, most fires come from people trying to hook up an inverter either using a wire not rated for the power draw, or by trying to wire it to a 12v wiring such as a cig lighter, which the wiring is not made to handle that much draw. If you go with 1500 watt or more inverter, you will have to be careful of your wiring, but just make sure you use the proper rated wire, and that it is hooked up securely to the battery array and hooked up correctly.

 

The big companies are not big fans of inverters because they are afraid of them catching fire. I ran a cobra 400 watt inverter for over 2 years without an issue. These companies really fear the big inverters because they don't want the drivers installing it themselves. (I'm pretty sure this kind of aftermarket modification would void warranties unless done by a professional.)

 

When I was at USXpress they installed my 1500 watt inverter for me. The only thing I had to provide was the inverter itself. They provided the wire and 2 60amp fuses. This was done at no cost to me.