Brokers, Please explain the plummeting rates these days.

Weight, gearing and the emissions on them is a lot of it. But most of it is 13L engines just give up at about 100,000lbs. Don’t know why, some of the E7’s would hang right with us even at full train weight. Even the Series 60’s tongue hung out on the ground with trains. In the ‘90’s I got 1.5mpg more out of a 3408 than the 430’s would do. Now my Cats are going up hills in high gear that are 2 shifts for those little Paccars and X12’s. I don’t even know why they sell those engines up here. Only the US bound trucks are under 96,000, just about everybody else up here are 110,000lbs plus. Most of the fuel saving things they push in the US market are the best way to burn as much fuel as you can run through it at our weights. Just doesn’t work here. I don’t care how big your engine is, you’re not pulling 140k on 8 axles @1400rpm with 3.36 gears like they tell you you have to run to get fuel mileage. My Cats run 65mph at 1600-1700 with 4.11’s or 4.33’s. They won’t run any slower with that much load on them without melting. Under 1600 the oil and water pumps aren’t running fast enough to get the heat out of them. Cousin has a ‘95 T600 with a 430-470 Series 60, RTOO13 and 3:55’s that runs US. That truck gets unbelievable fuel mileage, in the high 7’s under the worst conditions.

 

I won't argue about the current crop of engines. Not a fan. DD15 is ok, but just barely. It's reliable for what it is, as long as the onebox is maintained. My favorite is the 60 series, just because it's nearly bulletproof. It may not climb a hill, but in the big picture it doesn't make enough difference to matter. And I run across CO, UT,CA, OR all the time. My moving average speed doesn't vary more than about 2mph between days I run CO and day I run across NE.

Most of the fuel econ advice is geared toward 80k max wts. And in the current setups, the best seems to be in the neighborhood of 2.60 rear with 12 speed direct transmissions. 3.36 is decent for series 60 running around 58-63 mph.

I miss T600s, as ugly as they were. I want to find a T660 glider once all the easy money chasers run away from trucking.

 

I traded trucks with Cousin one night back when that one was new. First time I was ever in a T600 was in a N.W. Ontario snowstorm. I’d never seen anything suck every snowflake in a five square mile area into the windshield like that.

 

Those things are horrible about that, especially if they had a visor.

 

Bug deflector, removed that, snow isnt bad, but bugs are much worse
(Non-aero)

 

Im not sure why everyone associates poor mpg with HP
I had two vehicles many years ago that had big gas guzzling V8’s
It would cost me $20 ( not exactly ) to go to the liquor store down the road but $3 to go 75 miles

Around town stop and go it sucked fuel
On the highway those were basically just idling

I don’t think these efficient motors are best for long haul running
At some point they will be working harder to do what the big HP is doing with ease

 

High load factor applications you want as much engine as you can get your hands on. It’s you’re only hope to get any life out of it.

 

Because those people have never owned one. They just parrot what they hear from others instead of making conclusions from actual experience. I gained fuel mileage when I unshackled my CAT. Almost an entire 1 mpg actually.

 

A lot of people that own are in the same boat. They just run from load to load as fast as they can. They dont have any idea of their actual costs, or whether they ran at a loss or profit for any given load.

 

I beg to differ, we can’t go n the stores, and buy anything for the same price we did in 2019, The product’s prices have went up, And fuel is supposed to b one of the reasons for the price increases. So why haven’t the rates went up? Cost of fuel went up.