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IdleAire closing leaves truckers in cold
January 29, 2010
| by: Jill Dunn
IdleAire, the major provider of shore power to truckers, closed today, Jan. 29, after its investment company owners the past 18 months failed to find a buyer.
IdleAire is owned by six investment management companies that were working together as IdleAire Acquisition Co. LLC to sell the company, the owners said in a statement. A call to the Knoxville, Tenn.-based company headquarters yields a recording of the closing date and provides customers with an email address they can contact for receipts until Feb. 4.
Truckers will not be able to use the service after today, the company confirmed.
A statement released by “the company owners” said they were disappointed they were ceasing the operation that served 150,000 truckers and more than 1,000 fleets.
“The company had made great strides toward profitability in the midst of a very challenging operating environment,” the owners said. “We believe IdleAire had strong growth potential and was well positioned to capitalize on the recovering economy.
“Like many companies in the current economic situation, IdleAire experienced challenges,” they continued. “Due to the economy, our customers had less freight to haul, resulting in reduced truck traffic and we have had extremely mild weather across the nation, reducing the demand for our climate control service. We continued to stay ahead of the financial issues and make adjustments as needed, but time and operating capital simply ran out.”
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I’ve never used their services. I will be glad when the truck stops remove them and give us back some parking!
I used idleaire and have always enjoyed the heating,airconditioning,tv,movies and the quiet time. The truckstops have seen a reduction in business like everybody else.They probably will not remove the systems, at least not for a while,and i do not think it will change the parking shortage!
I agree,the only place to park sometimes would be all the empty IDLEAIR spots takin up 1/3 of the truckstop.
You didn’t have to hook up to park there, you just couldn’t idle and in this day and age idling your truck is expensive as well as irrespomsible. I am sorry to see them go. I have a S bar heater for winter but I really did like the a/c and the tv and movies.
Did they really think this was going to work? Drivers don’t have the money to spend on these services, economic downturn or not.
You were never required to use the service to park in the slots, the truck stops wouldn’t allow Idleaire to refuse parking. This is one reason Idleaire lost money.
I thought it was expensive. The money I get for fuel bonus would have been used up in a couple of uses. i would have been happy with just shore power
I thought it was a great fixture for the trucking industry. Fact, That it did “NOT” use up anymore parking spaces. In fact it cleaned up and made truckers park in a more uniform manner than in previous years before IdleAire. I remember coming into a truckstop where easy there could of been more parking freed up if drivers parked the correct way. I just had renewed my Gold Membership and am out of luck for it. I do hope with the equipment in place that someone will make an offer for them soon. They should not have a big problem getting rid of the company now that it is shut down. I am sure after 18 months not being able to sell it will take what they can. Sad thought too. It’s SuperBowl Sunday, and I was hoping to watch the game in the privacy of my own cab. Thank you to IdleAire for a great idea, Hope to see you back real soon. George @ Knight Transportation
Just one more added note here. If someone were to come and buy the operation now. The whole problem is expense. If they made Idleaire available in a subscription form. Where you pay a monthly fee Like we pay for cable and cell phones. And at a fair price. Drivers and Fleets would jump at it. Price the service at a monthly rate. I’d say for instance a fee of $49.95 a month for it all. And you would definately increase the amount of truckers using it. But would need an expansion in many northern areas to make it available wherever you go. And Govt could give a tax credit to fleets using this service. But then again we do have Democrats running things don’t we lol. Hope someone wises up and grabs this idea and brings IdleAire back soon. Take care and God Bless my fellow drivers and their family’s.. Be Safe
Yes, it did take parking places.
Next: Drop down treadmills to walk off our potbellies on the way to sleeper birth? yes please, that or pop-ups built factory custom right into the floor in front of bunk….
Good riddance! IdleAire only gave the govt. ammunition to limit the ability of drivers to keep warm or cool in their trucks, while taking away some parking spots.
The management of IdleAire promised that they would not “reserve” parking if the truckstops were full, yet they still did it.
I am glad they went belly up, and hope that this will be a lesson to anyone else that wants to profit off of government legislation that goes against the needs and real desires of truck drivers. What they charged was a joke, nobody could afford to use it on a regular basis and take money home to their family in these economic times.
Just like Park n View, remember them? With the advent of the APU, their technology was too late. Good Riddance!
I think the biggest reason they failed was not having their own “stand alone” locations. Too many people used their parking spots without using their services. I went into a lot of truck stops wanting to hook-up but was unable to because non-users were taking up a space I could have paid for. This was even when vacant parking spaces were elsewhere in the truck stop. If they had their own facility, you would have had to be a member or join up to park there. I’m going to miss it, especially the A/C in the hotter states
I for one am not surprised by idleaire having to shut down. I was a previous employee (hired right before they filed bankruptcy the 1st time). Best way to describe idleaire, GREAT CONCEPT ran completely ass backwards and poorly. The concept was to offer services for less cost then it would be to idle your truck for the same. As i said before “GREAT CONCEPT” However when the new people bought the company after the bankruptcy, they drastically INCREASED prices, and once that happened, how could you convince someone to sign up and use a service where they’d actually pay more money then they would spend by idleing their truck? Honest reality was, we were actually told to lie to the customer to basically confuse him and then cohoarse him into signing up for the service. When i say we were told to lie, i mean by our district managers! This was my conflict with working there, i loved the concept but i’m not a used car salesmen, hence i saw no reason to lie to the customer, and basically have him spend money out of his pocket he couldn’t afford for a service he really didnt need. I believe this is why i was let go (when they fired the other 75 percent of their work force). The majority of my co-workers never cleaned the modules (as was their job) rather they’d turn the modules on for 2 to 3 minutes and try to air them out a little bit but never actually cleaned them whatsoever. I did my job, and did it well, i cleaned the modules the second someone took it out of their cab and i tried my damndest to get that smoke smell out. Bottom line is, the owners as well as the managers of the sites did not care about their customers. They basically had a quota they were supposed to meet so the big dogs got paid the end. I had brought up many ideas, better ways to serve the company as well as bring in new customers. Lowering the price of the movies to 2.00 “hell you only get to watch it once and you cant pause, or rewind it, why pay 8 dollars)? Lower the hourly price back down to 1.49 an hr instead of what it ended up going to which was 3.14 or more. Loaning out coax cables instead of charging 5.00 for a p.o.s coax which probably cost the company 30 cents a piece. Most importantly though STOP HOUNDING and chasing down the truck drivers to talk to them about idle aire like you were a jahova witness. If they want the service they’ll come to you, if your company does right by your customers, people will get intrigued and come to you. The people that owned or managed the company / sites, were not business people and did not have the basic concept to run a business. I’m glad i got to know alot of the truck drivers i did and get a glimpse into their world through the stories they shared, if the company would of opened their ears and listned to some ideas the employees actually had, they might still be in business today. Like i said, idleaire great concept, ran poorly. Las vegas
i agree with most of what doug b. said about idle air , ever time i was in a tr. stop that had idle air was dirty , too expensiv , & did take up a lot extra parking . some way know look at the parking space gone ,trucks don’t have safe parking or any parking all over . it ins’t any wonder they gone bankrupe , they all wanted to rich fast off the trucks .
My guess is you’re spewing sour grapes because you were terminated. I worked for IdleAire for almost 5 years before we closed and never ONCE was I told by my DM to lie to a customer.True, I think when the new owners took over and raised the price, it was much too high for drivers to handle, and lowering it and having a constant Gold Card promotion was too late, but it wasn’t upper management that failed IdleAire. It was the ignorant travel center management who would not let us manage our spaces that we PAID for. Sure, IdleAire had an agreement with TA corporate, but they didn’t filter that down with local management. That in turn made them unreliable with helping us manage our spaces. We had plenty of drivers and fleets who wanted to use us, what we didn’t have was the SPACE because travel centers would not give us the authority to move drivers if they didn’t plan on using our service. If you have some cashier or shift leader getting paid $7.50/hr telling drivers they can park anywhere they want, how in the hell are we going to get customers hooking up with no support? We didn’t take away parking spaces – in fact we added spaces b/c of the way we set up our parking. What IdleAire failed to do is enforce our CONTRACT
Wasted parking spaces? How many pots did you lose? 3-4 at most. Couldn’t afford it??? You could afford to idle and burn a gallon of fuel an hour plus wear and tear on the engine?? I hate to see them close now I will have some idiot setting his truck @1200 rpm’s again beside me when its 50 or so degrees outside. I hope if someone is going to buy it they do it soon before these non driving da’s knock all of them down!
when the help started knocking on dorrs nwithin 1 min of me parking at a slot i knew something was up. b4 you start banging on doors give driver a chance to at least hook up. this was the final straw for me. i know for a fact unless you showed a membership card you couldnt park at their site in s. portland or. they had them blocked off. also their workers would park their rvs p,us ect in the spost. wanna see the photos? complaints to TA
wnt un answered.
Good reddens to them! Saw this happening when they 1st started up, knew they were going to fail just like PNV did.
To Doug B, nice to see that someone cared but that’s besides the point. Your argument that lowering the prices back down to what they were originally wouldn’t have helped any. I pay $70 a month for Direct TV (Basic) which gives me several dozen more channels to pick from than IdleAire ever offered on its best day and to run my APU for an entire night ran (in round numbers) $5. So that’s $220 a month or $7.34 a day. IdleAire charged by the hour and lets just use $3hr for arguments sake, on average a driver paid $27 a day (x30 days = $810!). Now who was cheaper off, who came out ahead of the game? The only people that got a “good” deal (if there really ever was one) were the large fleets, because they got discounted (bulk) rates, and even then it was too expensive. It was just a recruiting tool to get more drivers to sign on. No, next fool that comes up with some sort of similar idea will go belly up as well and follow suit with the predecessors. And if the truck stops that have them installed already try to take over “their” setup independently and charge for it as a exclusive, then that will even be worse. They already mark everything up 150-200% (as stated by their own managers I’ve talked to in the years). Can you imagine what prices will be like then? And service will be crappier than it already is! I say tear down ALL of the IdleAire facilities!
you got that right driver,although i got a 400.00 ticket in Mass,for runing my apu.i fought it and won …but what a pain in the trailer
All of the guys belly achin and bitchin about they couldnt afford idle aire are the exact ones that lot lizard hunt and spend gobs of money on video games. Come on get real here. It was a great concept my husband and I enjoyed it when we had the time to stop. Nice people worked for them. But to many want to spend money on gaming and diseases. If idle aire had provided the cry babies with lot lizards they would of gladly paid the prices!!!!!!! Thankfully Idle aire was not that kind of a company. I agree with the idea of they should of been in a stand alone situation. Then we as drivers who used it could of had the services.
The squall bags that whine about how you could not park in the parks must be the same ones who did and did not pay. now they take up the Handicap parks (which by the way is against the law)
anybody want to join me in a vinture. lets open up idleaire truckstops. give pilot and the other indepentant, don’t care about the the truck driver anymore attitudes, a run for there money. open up stricly “Idleaire” truckstops. you park. you hook up! if you don’t hookup, you can’t park! BUT!!! at the “Idleaire Trucstop” the reastaurant has curb service. order from the truck menu, set ya fat ass in the truck and they bring it to ya. what’ya thank
If I could find a way to invest in Idleaire I would restart them and move the corp offices to Houston.
My company would not reimburse me or any of our other company drivers for using them, so I never used them. They just got in the way when trying to find a spot to sleep. APUs are the only way to go now and my company won’t install them either. Too many drivers saw Idle Aire as a veiled attempt to transfer the cost of providing sleeping comfort onto the Drivers along with all the other ways large trucking companies game their drivers.
I am back here to add a comment. Also glad someone may just buy Idle Aire and start it back up. I will say one more time and read up what I wrote a few months ago. Idle Aire “Did NOT” take up more spaces. It rather organized them and if anything added a few. And I had hoped some might of liked my Idea of a monthly fee like we do with phones and internet and like home our cable. I truely believe there would be even more people using it if the price was a weekly and/or monthly fee compareable to that of having the phone/cable/internet access we do at home. They would have to add more slots because of the many that would want it then.
Good to see them go! Never could figure out there business model. How could they make money. As a non smoker I would never never never never use the damn things. When they first started up I tried it for 10 minutes. Thats all it took for my truck to smell like a stinking cigarette!
I just need ac power to run my AC and electric heater. Also to run a battery charger to keep the batteries charged. how much would that cost
Well, glad to see them go. Used the services once and the heater blew out air that smelled like smoke. As a non smoker this did not sit well with me! Had issues with no parking at the truck stops that had IdleAire. There was one spot left and I pulled in just like they stated. The clerk came over to my truck and asked if I needed help to hook up. I told them I wasn’t using the services. They had asked me to move! I explained I had to park..needed break and I was not idling my truck! She went in to get the manager and he ordered me to move. I wrote Idleaire and never heard a response. So when someone says you could park in their spots…where were you when I was ordered out of the one last spot?!?!
Shorepower has a few locations up in the northwest that provide a simple electrical outlet for drivers that have an APU. This is the ONLY company I want to see around in the future.
I really enjoyed Idle Aire. It saved me money vs. idling and allowed me great in cab services. Truckstops are moving to non-smoking are more enjoyable as this transition occurs. Idle Aire offered a great alternative plus the convenience to watch the movie of your choice instead of some forced show or worse a sports event. I went out of my way to find locations. In fact, I still have a couple of bucks left on my card. Hope they will find their way back real soon.
How can I buy Idle Aire : let me know….. wandaice@hotmail.com
I love Idie Aire, it’s almost like a small motel 6 but cheaper, close your blinds and get the T.V. going, and get on the internet, or on the phone, oh yeah, it’s the life, get something cold to drink, and a snacks, with A/C, or heater and just do your thing.
Being a company driver I would never pay for Idleair,paying 10$ for eggs at the truckstops,spend way to much money on the road as it is,glad there gone,may they never return.We need to be worrying about csa and the affects on us,asking for more money like 80,000 a year salary
Many drivers compared them to park n view and claimed they would leave a bunch of drivers holding the bag. They were right on.
It was a good service, if your company would pay for it. Many companies wouldn’t. I know I was not going to pay to use it at a cost of $1.50 an hour for 10 hours over several days a week, maybe as much as 20 a month.
I thought they were too high by far. All we need is shore power, So we can use our own appliances. I think .75 cph would be a fair price for that. Everyone could afford that.
I’ve never used Idleair, but have heard good things about it. Sounds really expensive.
i will be happy to see idelaire come back… company driver i used it all the time…saved on me ideling my truck…my dog an i enjoyed the heat an ac all the movies an tv….it was a quite time for us an the idel air folks were very helpfull….
I’ve been on the road for 20 years moving furniture. I invented a idle aire hook up that attatched to my trailer door as we had a crew of 4 that traveled full time 3 of us slept in the van we used idle aire almost every day. Would only stop at truckstops with idle aire. Even running air all night from 7pm till 5 am winter or summer it was still cheaper than a hotel! We loved idle aire and can’t wait till it’s back!!! U get heat AC and the history Chanel! Life is good with idle aire
Once again we cant all agree on anything,I’v been driving 49 years never used idleair and never will I have a bunk heater screens for my windows and two fans one in bunk one at top of windshield dont have to idle unless I want.Yes I’m still driving dont have to just enjoy it as much as I ever did.I dont drive as much as I used to three weeks out of the month seven months of the year,I hop you all can find a way to get what you need god bless you drivers and even you complainers,hang in there all will turn out fine.
To all the truckers that thinks the aire system took up parking well, the truth is you had the ability to park in the space at any time you wanted even if you didn’t use the product. It was high priced but the concept was great, thumbs up to the driver from knight trans about the flat fee idea. also to the wheel holders put your feet on the floor and stop reading going down the road, ive been driving for over 15 years and would like to keep going. GOD BLESS ALL OF US END KEEP EM ROLLING PEOPLE TRUCKS BRING GREAT THINGS HOME
I’m disgusted at what some of the careless drivers did to the equipment left behind. Why would you damage the equipment and not pay attention to what your doing? I’m hoping they will at least get the IdleAir back in California and the states that like to issue high tickets for keeping cool in the blazing summer. But with the drivers tearing up the equipment, investment is going to be even higher because they have to repair what was damaged. I honestly think if the government wants clean air, they should step in and buy this technology, charge us to use it, and keep it maintained. If you can afford a $400 ticket while idling in Barstow or Ontario, I’m sure you can afford to pay the IdleAir. It gives you great quiet time and plenty of cool air. It’s worth the money and saves your equipment from wear and tear, plus fuel expenses.
I agree that with the parking shortage and that with the idle-aire taking up about half of the parking. But I also agree that they should close their doors, with a lot of the states placing idle restrictions, there are more truck mounted APU’s on trucks these days, and they pay for themselves in the first year of usage, just in fuel usage alone. I have never used Idle-Aire and have planned on it in the past, I just couldn’t come up with the cash flow for the charges that they wanted.
When I last used them in 2007, I found them to be over priced. It was cheaper to idle my truck than to pay for the service they provided.