I work for Schneider and drive a Freightliner Century currently and I want to actually get a fridge to bring along better food then the fast food and greasy spoon has to offer. I do currently have a coleman thermoelectric cooler but with being out 3 weeks at a time it is hard to pack that much food.

Lately what I have been doing is making up food at home, taking an entire day to cook out of the 3 I am home for, tossing them in foil pans and freezing them to warm up in my lunchbox oven. But the cooler can only hold 15 of them and hardly leaves room for vegies and fruit to snack on. Lunch meats thankfully don't take up much room. Also no room to keep drinks cold or milk for my cereal.

My question is, will a small fridge run off a 400 watt power inverter while the truck is running? I can't seem to find any information on the amps or wattage used on those things. It's going to be a while before Schneider wants to spend 8k per truck refitting all 1500 tractors with APU's.

I saw a smaal dorm style fridge at Pep Boys and it was a compressor type not thermo-electric, on the back it was listed if I remeber correctly around 1.2 amps.. times that by the voltage 115V and you get 138 watts... now Im sure it wil take alittle more each time the compressor cycles but if you hard wire a 400w you should have no problem.. ( I picked up a 400w 800w peak Cobra inverter at Pilot for $39.99 and hard wired it) BTW the refrig is 69.99 after a rebate When I get back I need to measure it to see if it will fit in my Freightliner Columbia...

No it will not. Been there tried that using a 400 watt inverter with a plug.

it will not work

we have a 1500 watt inverter and when the compressor kicks on it pulls 1200 watts then drop's down to 600 when it is running. i would not try to run a fridge on less on less than 1000 watt inverter.

Thx for the input. Guess I'll just keep with this then.

buy a second cooler, set it on the front seat....

A cig plug inverter will not run it but if ya hard wire it it will work, as long as you stay with a small fridge.. like I said before just read the amps on the label and multiply that by the volts also on the label, if all else fails call the maker of the fridge and ask them the wattage requirements...

can't do that, that is where my laptop sits with my copilot running.

My 400/800 is hard wired because of my C/pap machine.

I've seen fridges made specially for trucks but they cost upwards of $500 or more.

I've been told by the mechanics here that a fridge is actually better for the truck then a cooler because the fridge only runs when it is needed unlike a cooler which runs constantly.

I've heard people having them but haven't seen any proof and looking at the boxes in the store or online and I can't get solid information on the power requirements.

Another reason I would like a fridge is that sometimes I get tendinitis and the best thing for it is a cold pack to reduce the swelling. A cooler can't really keep one of those that cold for me.

I hard wired mine also for the CPAP I have... when I get back home next week I'll check out teh fridge at PePBoys and I'll post the info... I'll most likely buy it as long as it fits in my sleeper.

If you get a fridge make sure you vent it properly. We have a norcold in here and we had to replace ours. In talking to norcold, we found that they have a lot of problems with the truck fridge's because the truck design doesn't allow for proper ventilation which overheats the fridge and makes it go bad.

I know you're probably talking about a regular household dorm fridge... but I just want to add this for informational purposes:

A truck fridge differs from an RV fridge because RV fridges are made to run off propane, ac and dc. The truck fridges are actually marine-style, not rv style. They have a slightly different cooling setup. I couldn't tell you the difference, but they are not the same.

Just a little food for thought.