Tell me what yout think about IdleAire

[the 48th ronin]

Bueller? Bueller?

means nothing to me... your point with this is?

[Searching123]

48th,

I don't think it's reasonable to hold the grant money thing again IA, or any other company that competes for it. The government sets this $ aside to accomplish a certain task and any company whose product/function supports accomplihing the task is free to compete for it. At a working man's level this is identical to what the government does for all of us in many different ways. For example, if you replace windows and doors in your home with new energy efficient ones, you can claim a 10% tax credit on your income taxes...that's a grant. We should also be straight on what kind of $s we're talking about. I looked at one of IAs more recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In 2006 and 2007 they received a little over $4.7 million in grants. Yes, to you and me that is a lot of $. However, I think it's only fair to give them credit for what they put in from their own private funding. In Dec. 2006 (or maybe it was 2005) through, private equity funding, IA raised $320 million to fund their expansion.(This information can be found by going to the IA website, clicking the Investor Relations link, and then clicking the SEC Filings link. Choose one of the 10-K filings. It is a fairly long filing, but if you go to approximately the middle of it and look for columns of numbers you'll be able to find it.)

As for the NY installation, at Bronx I think, yeah, it has closed. But to be fair about it, it was a market test installation and IA partnered with Shurepower (or maybe it's Shorepower) who is now a competitor. So I don't think it's an apples and apples comparison to their other installations. Be aware, too, that between Maryland, NJ, NY, PA and OH, there are now between 30 and 35 installations...funded almost exclusively with private equity funding.

Enough for now.

Hope you and Mary got in some sailing over the weekend. Friday and Saturday, in East Tennessee, the wind would have blown you off the lake.

[happylife]

Everyone has different habbits to live. Whatever things are, someone like, someone don't. But it is good from a big view, so it is good and worth to do it.

[the 48th ronin]

happylife wrote:

Everyone has different habbits to live. Whatever things are, someone like, someone don't. But it is good from a big view, so it is good and worth to do it.

I have read all thier SEC filings, a "good" thing in a free market makes a profit.....

They have not as they admit, they do not think they will any time soon as they also admit.

In fact they even say that if they should make a profit, they cannot forsee continueing to make one....So like light rail and other government subsidised social engineering projects.. They are good to those who intend to make a career out of riding that horse, and to those who use their subsidised services... and a pain in the wallet to everyone who is robin hooded into supporting them.

last year they made 37 million in income, but after spending like drunken sailors, they ended up 90+ million in hot checks ove spent, I wish I could run my business like that and then offe to sell it to the public and take a 1 million dollar buy out... WOO WOO capitalism at it's best!

[the 48th ronin]

ps there were also two installations on the New York thru way at service plazas, that had to be torn down....

Yes they have raised hundreds of millions in private equity funding, and they have spent every dime.....

wonder who has gotten rich while this dinasaur design has been foisted off on truck stops all over the country?

[Searching123]

Significant fuel savings with SingleWides - See Below (At $4.00/gallon at the pump, savings equal to $0.28 to $0.40/gallon.):

Tractor-trailers operating with single wider tires recorded improved fuel efficiency numbers between 7.2 and 10 percent when compared to rigs operating on standard sized dual tires.

A year-long truck performance study managed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Heavy Truck Safety Research program concluded that trucks carrying payloads up to the federal weight limit of 80,000 pounds had improved miles-per-gallon diesel savings because the wider tires had better rolling resistance performance. The study involved instrumenting a fleet of tractor-trailers accumulating 700,000 miles, making it the most extensive public study yet involving single wider tires. Previous studies by ORNL that involved less data to work with indicated improved fuel efficiency of only 3 percent. The funding source is the DOE Office of Vehicle Technologies.

[Searching123]

More huge profits for the oil companies. This time Chevron.

From the Associated Press,(see below) Chevron racket up $5.17 billion in the 1st quarter 2008. Divide that by 91 (days in a quarter) and they earned $57 million dollars per day...that's what they earned after they paid all the bills...their net profit!!!

Every time we put gas or diesel in our vehicles, the oil companies and the middle east get richer....and speaking of subsidies (grants), oil companies get $18 billion dollars per year. The most profitable companies in the world (not those trying to get started out) getting our tax dollar in the form of handouts/grants.

NEW YORK - Astounding profits in the oil industry are becoming as routine as the anguished looks of motorists filling up their gas tanks.

Chevron Corp. put yet another exclamation point on the oil patch’s long run of prosperity Friday with a first-quarter profit of $5.17 billion, or $2.48 per share. That was up 10 percent from net income of $4.72 billion, or $2.18 per share, last year. The performance exceeded the lofty expectations of analysts.

It was the second-highest quarterly profit in the company’s 129-year history and marked the most money that it has ever made during the January-March period. That puts the No. 2 U.S. oil company on track for its fifth straight year of record earnings.

[Duckie]

It sounds like you have a few morons trying to tell you stupid stories about IdleAire and a few smart drivers who understand it. Lets face it a lot of drivers are older and can't stand change. They think this planet will last forever and prefer to go about things the hard way rather than learn to adapt. The govt wont force anyone to do this. But drivers need to be smart enough to see it's a good idea.
I sometimes go on the road with my husband. The employees at IdleAire actually care about these guys on the road. They walk the lot keeping it safe and help everyone they ALSo cleaning the modules...although they don't always smell fresh I'm sure that's temporary until they find a solution.

[Duckie]

LMAO Who cares how much fuel you bought if you're parked with IdleAire. Their not part of the truck stop...Duh.
And maybe you should get towed. You say they make it hard to back into a spot You're not supposed to back into their spots. Hence they try to make it hard to.
And can you blame them for going to trucks that aren't members and trying to sell their produce? Isn't that a better idea than sitting in a office waiting for a driver to come up? Come on now, think like a business man!

the 48th ronin wrote:

As I understand it...( could be simply tales by managers I have seen no documents) IA decided to "partner" with existing fuel stops because they assumed thier product would be welcome there and were in fact already concentrated there for the OTHER amenities ( food fuel shops showers laundry etc.)
The original agreements were probably pretty smilar, According to managment at PETRO the IA people were allowed to put 2 employees in the parking lot at a time... I mayself have seen as many as 10 in some locations,
According to Petro managment the IA employees were forbidden to go anywhere on the property to solicit, but were instead to remain in the "office awaiting calls for customer help or be in the installation for routine things like maintanance. This grew to in many cases 2 or more employees parking near the office in the parking lot with no care that they made turns or backing into spots more dificult. The average installation now has one man lift parked somewhere, at least one container on the ground for storage plus the office. Employees have at times walked all through the parking lot writing down the license plate and dot numbers and unit designators from all trucks in a parking lot, This was viewed by some drivers as "leaning " on them when coupled with employees knockingon thier doors and "asking" them to move over and use the service before writing down the information.
According to Petro, the agreement always stipulated that IA would never ask drivers not using the service to move if the lot was othersise full as those drivers were customers of the truck stop first and when unable to park outside IA spaces the saces would not be denied to them. I can assure you that some IA managers have gone on power trips and threatyened drivers with towing etc when they were parked at IA because the rest of the stop was full.
The golf cart issue is another seemingly innocent deal, every IA slot has a golf cart so that employees will not have to walk the horendous distance of 100 yeards.. Truckers who are always trying hard to see pedestrians, and other trucks are now confronted at times with two people riding around and around at full golf cart speed. IA cannot be unaware of this as the ytire wear on th golf carts alone would show excessive speed and use.
I have documented elsewhere on the internet a few examles of simply unacceptable behavior of IA employees to drivers simply trying to use the truck stops they have always used and supported without bothering with IA. I have stories of IA managers harrasing truckers even to the point of following them into the restaurant and haranging them to try the service while they were trying to eat, and in my own case I had to call the managment of a truck stop chain to stop a group of IA employees that were harassing me to the point they tried to get the truck stop security to make me leave the truck stop I had just bought 250 gallons of fuel from.
IA has claimed they were gonna retrain employees to stop the harassment, but they have neither done that nor redesigned the equiptment to eliminate blind backing out a very dangerous thing almost every driver is against.

[ppp]

use your seat belts and nobody will be able to brake into your truck unless they brake your big windows on the sides.

Long Haul Driver wrote:

I did not say kickout a window, what I said was pop out the kick window(that little window down at the feet on the doors) it is very common for thieves to use a boxcutter to cut out that window or use a screwdriver to pop it out of the seal and then break into the truck.

[to much]

I think it so funny that people who are probably sitting in their trucks with IA hooked up are the ones complaining. Sure those who don't like it can run their trucks all night and waste that wonderful $4.23+ a gal fuel. More power to them!

[the 48th ronin]

Just for shits and giggles, I just walked the parking lot here at the TA in Sparks..

8 trucks idling, 72 trucks shut off...

No idle air

I have been doing this off and on for the last few weeks starting with the J in sullivan mo.

the small number of trucks idling as compared to the large number shut off makes you wonder why invest millions in a device that only has a use for 3 or 4 months out of the year?

[Searching123]

48th,

If I'm parked and the outside temperature is 55 - 75, I'm not idling either. In a single day's manditory rest period, I'd be spending $40, possibly more, in fuel costs alone. If you do a walk around in the heat of summer or the dead of winter, then the 8:72 ratio you found in Sparks will flip-flop. Or, be more like 80 idling, 0 shut off.

The point to keep focused on, though, is don't use fuel you don't have to. Whether you use IA, Shurepower, APUs, or just choose not to idle, don't give the Middle East and the oil companies $ you don't have to. It weakens our country and they laugh all the way to the bank.

[the 48th ronin]

Searching123 wrote:

48th,
If I'm parked and the outside temperature is 55 - 75, I'm not idling either. In a single day's manditory rest period, I'd be spending $40, possibly more, in fuel costs alone. If you do a walk around in the heat of summer or the dead of winter, then the 8:72 ratio you found in Sparks will flip-flop. Or, be more like 80 idling, 0 shut off.
The point to keep focused on, though, is don't use fuel you don't have to. Whether you use IA, Shurepower, APUs, or just choose not to idle, don't give the Middle East and the oil companies $ you don't have to. It weakens our country and they laugh all the way to the bank.

The point for me is that it is almost criminal and surely at least fascist to think the government has the right to spend everyones money to promote a poor solution to a problem that is neigher worth having nor even cost effective. If 1/2 the year is too hot to shut off your engine, the average team truck spend less than 4 hours a day stopped, and the average single driver truck 10 hours a day which is usually at night when the temps are mitigated. The cost of fuel is proving my point that the individual driver can without multi millions of dollars of PUBLIC investment and pressure of excessive gvernment intervention in private business solve the problem of stopped time cost. I spent the time documenting the NON USE of the dinasaur I A is promoting, you have no answer to the bad design,, nor the wasted effort except a nebulas future savings that price alnoe is making a bad guess.

The entire operation os a sham to promote a wider reach of internet ISP and for hire services that no one needs or wants. Movies can be rented from a red box for a dollar, Internet access existed and will continue to exist without I A and the anti idle sham is exposed from day one as just that a sham.

[the 48th ronin]

Smart truck stops including several petros are placing signs at IA installations already that say " you do not have to use this service to park here" Guess who ownes that parking lot.

[Searching123]

48th,

I am confident there are things we agree on...probably much more than we disagree on, but this obviously isn't one of them.

Just curious, what are you doing with your income tax rebate?...how is that (grant) any different? At least with IA, which has received less than 1.5% of it's funding from grants over the past two years, they are creating jobs, reducing our dependence on foreign oil, helping non-attainment areas reach attainment and reducing CO2 emissions....never mind, your response would be devoid of fact, based on supposition, and be incomprehensible jibberish.

Honestly, continued exchanges between us on this matter would be a waste of time....we're just too far apart.

Regardless, happy sailing to you and Mary.

[MoNarc]

IdleAire employees are mostly people who cannot get work elsewhere. In Missouri at the Concordia and Boonville sites the employees have a drug company set up. They supply the drivers that want it with meth. The supervisor of Concordia, Greg Bettis, was the one that actually started it. Anyone who gets close to finding out the truth of what's going on gets fired for whatever Greg Bettis can think of and make stick. He coaches his employees that he likes with what to say and what to write to get someone fired. There's a new supervisor at Boonville now, but the night guy, Chad Butler, and one of the day guys, who goes by the name of Brian, are still pumping out the meth at Boonville. Don't defend IdleAire site reps, what out for them!

[TANGLEFOOT]

Idle Aire is filing for bankrupsy..They cannot get any more loans.

[4our5idedtrian6l e]

IdleAire is no longer providing jobs and helping local economys. In the begging of this year they eliminated 40 corporate positions and about 3% of the field personel in an effort to save money on payroll. Since then they have been finding the most ridiculous excuses to get rid of people and not replacing them. All you IA employees that write on here I know youve noticed it. I give them til the end of the year tops. If you work for IA now start looking for work because you will meet the same fate. And as for bad IA employees peddling drugs on the lot, not all of them do that. U have to figure out of 130 sites across the nation of course there will be some bad apples. Call it in and report it. IA is not above the law.

[Driver from downunder]

Hey ronin, you outta be a complete genius.You really done your homework on all this.Why don't you go start your own company since you know how to run someone elses.Your a real hoot.seriously though,you sound like an insider to me.You got to much info or just alot of time on your hands.