MILTON -- At the Petro truck stop near Milton, the roaring sound of diesel engines idling in the parking lot is quickly becoming a thing of the past.

With the rising cost of fuel, truckers are seeking more efficient options to idling their diesel engines for electricity. Instead, many truckers are shutting off their engines and hooking up to electrical outlets that provide them with heating, air conditioning, television, Internet and telephone access.

IdleAire is a nationwide corporation that provides truckers with a pay-as-you-go service. For $10, truckers purchase an adapter that fits into the passenger-side window that's used to hookup to an electrical outlet. From there, they're charged a usage fee of $2.45 per hour.

The system is cheaper than burning a gallon of gas an hour, said IdleAire Milton site manager Anna DiCenso. "At the cost of $4.89 a gallon, it gets rather expensive," she said.

William Emerson, a trucker from Delaware, said he started using IdleAire about five years ago when the price of diesel fuel began to rise. "We've got to do whatever we can to cut back on costs," he said.

James and Aubrey Slack, of Kentucky, have seen how IdleAire has saved on wear and tear on their 18-wheeler. "You're talking idling, it's kind of rough on some of these motors that are coming out and everything," James Slack said.

Using IdleAire instead of running diesel engines also has environmental impacts. "We've been here over 24 hours," Aubrey Slack said. "So we've saved how much of fumes going into the air over the last 24 hours."