Well,
As anyone can read here, it appears that about 99% shut off the engines when fueling up. While there are some fuel stations that are 6' from an off ramp, most, you have to travel maybe a block to say, a few blocks. In that time, all turbos have cooled down considerably and, gas engines have also cooled down from any nearby freeway runs.
Personally, I think it's fairly rude to let your engine, especially the 8-balls that let there diesel pickups run and, you can see that they've not hauled anything or have any trailers or anything else. They think it's just "cool" that they've got a diesel and they have to let it run to impress whoever.
We have a diesel, the C-7 CAT in ours and, if I just got off the freeway, and it was an up hill grade to the off ramp, and the fuel station is, like stated, 6' off the freeway, I might let it run for about a minute to a 1.5 minutes. All the while I check the temp on my info center and see what it was when we entered the fuel station and, after about a minute, what it is then. Usually it drops by a few degrees and I shut things down.
In over 35 years on the FD, I rarely let the engine run after a long hard, higher speed run to an emergency, where upon arrival, the engine doesn't need to be ran. In some cases, like at traffic accidents, we had to let it run to power up multiple code and flashing lights and strobes all over the beast and those consume some serious electrical juice. Conditions would dictate whether or not to let it run.
But, personally, I don't let it run unless there's really some specific reason. (i.e. maybe the batteries were really low when I started it and, I'd only ran it for a mile or two to the stop I'm presently at).
Scott
