off-grid for the trucker

[caverdudeParticipant]

My career is trucking. I drive coast to coast all 48 states and canada. I went off grid a few years ago by selling a mobile home that was in an urban area. I can’t tell you how much relief I’ve felt since I eliminated those bills. I also sold my car and pickup and bought a 1984 GMC 7 passeger 3/4 ton van. I am working on eliminating my debt. I was as deep as 45,000 now down to 10,000. I have almost decided to remain off-grid forever. Off grid not only from electricity but from most everything.

However my current plans after debt is paid off is to save cash for a lot, a well used mobile home, moving and setup cost. After this I will consider more offgrid dwelling construction. The mobile home will simply be a base, something that in the future I may rent out and I may not use the grid much while living there.

http://larrydgray.net

http://larrydgray.wordpress.com

[elnavMember]

You sounds much like my buddy who also does long distance hauling of extra wide loads. Some states do not permit hauling them on week-ends so he frequently ended up with two day layovers where ever that put him come Friday night. After burning out the second or third inverter he asked me if I could help. I design power systems for a living so his rig was a cinch.

I was working at Xantrex at the time so I got an inverter cheap by using my employee discount. Five years later when he changed trucks he was still living ‘off-grid’ as it were on the same inverter and cooking electrically using nothing but his starter batteries. He was amazed that despite forgetting to turn off the inverter several times when the rig was in for major service work lasting a couple of days he never had a flat battery. He had an electric frying pan, a kettle and a George Forrman grill not to mention a fridge and entertainment system all running on 120V

[caverdudeParticipant]

Yes inverter tech has really improved as of lately.

[elnavMember]

All the experts said you can’t run air conditioners on inverters until I proved them wrong. Now all the USCG 47′ rescue boats are running their air conditioners with inverters. If you get a Mermaid brand air conditioner it runs just great on an 8D truck start battery for seveal hours.

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