Waiting on New Trucks thread.

You do have more power now, but that can help mileage sometimes.

 

Even if I lose a bit of mileage I'd rather have the extra horsepower and extra gears and better rear end ratio.. I struggled a lot with the aero truck out in the midwest getting in those headwinds..pulling a piece of equipment I'd have the fuel pedal on the floor and can't get it out of 11th gear going 55mph.. Just not the right tool for the job. I wouldn't be surprised at all if the mpg got a little better having a couple more ponies to work with

 

Sometimes being able to hold a higher gear pulling a hill will be better. Still more gallons per minute, but a lot less minutes.

 

You’ll never get the fuel nazis to understand that kind of thinking

 

I had a 550 hp truck that would climb all big hills with ease, no downshifts, and stroll on past everyone else on real grades. It was fun trucking. I loved it, and miss it. Hop out in the left lane to make a pass mashing on the go pedal grossed out at 80k (yeah I know lightweight 5 axle easy stuff) and it accelerated almost car like. I'm not driving a truck like that anymore lol but at the end of the day the "big truck" didn't really get any farther timewise on an 8 or 10 hour trip than the more fuel efficient one.

 

Life is short

#Fun is priceless……

 

There’s a formula for that. The inputs are weight, grade, and speed, which equals “X” BTU’s, where the BTU number is the amount of energy required. That gets converted into gallons of fuel burned to generate the BTU’s. Getting up the grade faster requires more BTU’s, therefore, burning more fuel to do it. Time is a byproduct of the speed, so it doesn’t factor. The aero drag of running faster isn’t even factored into the basic formula, which will further increase fuel usage. But, the bottom line is you’re still burning more fuel.

I get the deal of having the pedal on the floor, in 11th, to run 55mph. I do that now in this T680, pulling a dry van, into head winds. Sometimes, I go over overpasses at 50mph, in IL and IN. A bigger hammer would be awesome. But, it is what it is.

 

You're missing some components in your formula. How much energy is lost during shifting for example. Also, and I don’t know the answer, is wind drag directionally proportional?

 

You put it in whatever gear you can just leave your foot off the throttle and idle along no matter if there’s a hill or not. Time is a byproduct of speed don’t you know!
Think about all the fuel you’ll save. And when you haul your big excavator; you can go for a walk along the roadside and enjoy the scenery while your truck lags behind you!




If you’re running a dry van OTR, you really need to spec for fuel mileage to be profitable in my opinion.
There’s a lot of other kinds of trucking, where people hyper focused on mpg can tell us all about fuel mileage, but the real world results speak different. Trucking IS NOT one size fits all.
“Well what I do would be better because” yeah for YOU and YOUR operation.

I could share specs for a truck that would kick ### for what I do. While probably 90+ percent of everybody that read the spec sheet and knew what they were looking at would think I was out of my ####ing mind.

 

Oxbow what’s the heaviest you gross ?