Truck Stops Get Wireless Internet

Makarand writes "According to SFGate.com, a company called IdleAire Technologies are building high-tech truck stops to provide drivers with air-conditioning, television, Internet access and phone service in truck cabs, so that they can turn off their engines. Trucks will pull into bays, where flexible tubes ending in vents for hot or cold air, and touch sensitive screens for Internet access can be pulled inside the truck's cab. There's also a separate wireless Internet option, where drivers don't have to pull into the bays. The basic services provided cost less than the fuel spent in idling a truck."

Comments

I want to be a trucker too

[kyoko21]

Wow. That's pretty cool. If a trucker can get internet access, maybe those who are unemployed should look into those trucking schools. Some of the truckers I have heard make $40/hour. Not too shabby.

Drive-ins

[bubblegoose]

The system itself works, in some ways, like a car speaker at a drive-in movie theater.

How many people are going to get that reference? The drive-ins have been gone from Eastern PA for around 10+ years now. The cheap porno one was the last to go in this area, and for years before that they broadcast their signal over low power AM.

Boy, am I feeling old right now.

Wireless at Truckstops

[prhodes]

The local Flying J's truckstop has been advertising wireless access for about a month - I don't think it has the a/c stuff set up - no bays. At any rate, are there really that many truckers hauling around laptops?

Re:Wireless at Truckstops

[American AC in Paris]

At any rate, are there really that many truckers hauling around laptops?

I don't know, but honestly, this is one occupational demographic that can really use wireless internet.

Consider that they've developed an intricate code-oriented language for use over CB radios. (They've been heavily into the "wireless communications" thing for decades, if you look at it in that light.)

Consider that a trucker has both a financial and personal safety interest in knowing things like nationwide weather forecasts, traffic reports, and navigational systems. These people really do rely heavily on knowing where that snowstorm is going, or hearing about the multi-car accident on their projected route through a busy city at rush hour.

Consider that trucking can be an amazingly lonely occupation, and the ability to communicate with people is incredibly valuable. Truckers got spouses and families. How else are you going to get your e-mail, complete with photo attachments of little Johnny doing something cute? Would you prefer some half-assed, run-down attempt at a pay kiosk in the middle of the truck stop, or your own personal system in the privacy of your own cab?

Networking has been part of trucking for decades. In many ways, this is the next logical step.

I saw a trucker fill up this morning....

[mhore]

$62.50 ... duno if that was to fill up both tanks or not.

Hm, not much more than filling up a Hummer, eh?

How much per hour, though... duno.

Mike.

Re:I saw a trucker fill up this morning....

[Camaro]

Being a farmer who produces some grain, I've had a chance to talk to a few truckers who haul my grain. I recall one fellow saying he would normally get 1-2 miles per gallon loaded. He would probably be carrying about 30-35 tons of grain at the time with a three-axle bulk trailer pulled with a late-80s Freightliner with a 400 Cummins engine. Most truckers hauling grain are now running trucks pulling Super-B trailers, which would be two trailers (five axles plus the truck). I can't imagine the fuel economy being any better.

Re:Convoy!

[Igor47]

OH MY GOD!

Good point. I just had this image in my head of a map with little red dots moving everywhere representing nodes on an ad hoc network...that would be so awsome!

there are probably enough trucks in any metropolitan area to sustain a connection. Certainly, if you drive around LA you'll run into a few trucks ever couple of blocks, making deliveries. if every one of these trucks had a wireless access card, a blanket of wireless coverage would decend accross the city....

Won't change

[HogGeek]

I used to work with a trucker in the summers delivering farm equipment. He had told me that the reason truckers don't "shutdown" the truck was because it was too hard on the engine. Nothing to do with AC or anything else. Semi engines run for 500,000 + miles typically without any work other than routine service (i.e oil change)

So while wireless internet may be a "value add", I don't see the bays being used by long distance OTR drivers, unless things have changed.

Snow Crash

[Maimon495]

If I remember correctly, this was described almost the same way in Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash" - though I forget the name of the make- believefranchise. This is the spread of the "techno-sprawl" into middle America. Pretty soon every franchise will let you get into the net (Free .5 hour of wireless with your big mac). I'm not sure if truck-drivers are the key demographic, but the question is what else can that infrastructure be leveraged for

Re:Great Idea..

[RevMike]

There will probably be substantial grants involved in those regions of the country (USA) that can't mee the clean Air Act requirements.

Dubya even made this part of his envirnmental policy.

Re:How soon until the urine tube?

[abolith]

I saw some wierd scifi movie once where truckers and other drivers were hard-wired into their rigs for life, complete with feeding and waste dispposal machines. matter of fact they even controlled the rigs without even moving. Maybe directly controlled by the mind? they never made any of that clear, it was more along the lines of guy-1:"why is that guy in there like that?" other dude:"he's a controller (or something like that) he never gets out of the vehicle, the rig sustains him 24/7, it is where he will spend the rest of his life."

I have seen them

[Anonymous Coward]

I have actually seen this setup since a friend of mine is one of their programmers... heck if i was a trucker this would rock. Slick touch screen running on 64 flashram with linux as the backbone. Really sweet if you ask me.

Reduced air pollution

[Anonymous Codger]

Encouraging truckers to shut down their engines during their downtime has to reduce air pollution considerably. I once drove a diesel van from DC to Iowa and back with a friend. We stopped to sleep at a truck stop in Ohio. After about 1/2 hour we had to leave the truck stop because we couldn't breathe. The fumes from all the idling trucks were beyond belief.

I don't know how the truckers can stand it. Maybe their insides are so well coated with truck-stop food grease that the fumes couldn't get through.

Yes, it's Linux-based

[Chriscypher]

I worked on this project.

Yes, the service module (the thing you stick in your cab window) is built atop a roll-your-own Linux implementation. The enclosure is novel (in order to handle air conditioning/heating/other services, but the boards are primarily off-the-shelf.

In our research, not many truckers have laptops and those that do rarely have ethernet (most use dialup). The system is capable of handling web-browsing entirely via touchscreen, but this was not implemented for some reason.

Re:Potential problem

[vasqzr]

Epic MegaGames actually started like this. The two guys that started the company drove semi trucks, and while one guy drove for 8 hours, the other would program, do art, level design, etc.

Kind of neat, eh?

Inspired me to write a Tetris clone on our 30 hour drive to Disney World in the family station wagon. I wrote it on paper then actually typed it in at the Hotel. I didn't have a cigarette lighter power inverter back in 1993.

Re:Actually, it might raise the intelligence level

[Anonymous Coward]

"Or maybe we just need more farmers, with their own working farms."

We'd have them, too, if it were possible to operate a farm without being forced to pay taxes in Federal Reserve Notes. They don't grow from the ground. So the only way to live as a farmer is to sell your farm to Archer Daniels Midland and/or Monsanto, and then work for them, if they have a job for you.

I can grow enough wheat and other grains and vegetables on my land to feed a family and have a surplus. What I cannot do is grow a marketable quality or quantity of food -- which means I could NOT sell my produce even if I were so inclined, and most importantly it means that I could not make enough money by selling my produce to pay the taxes on the land. So instead, I work as a software developer in another state, while my farm grows nothing but weeds, and sits neglected. On the other hand, the taxes are "cheap" from this end.

If I could go and live there, and grow my own food without having to ALSO work at some regular paying job in order to get Federal Reserve Notes with which to pay taxes, I would.