Whats up with 62 mph?

of course your spose to pay attention although many don't and many see signs as only suggestions.If you're happy with driving 55 mph more power to you.I would have to stop and take a few power naps if I drove that slow every day if I was OTR. My trk is 60 and I hate it but understand the reasoning behind it.But the OTR trks are governed at 65.

 

Yup, I can do 65, but I loose money that way. 78,000 at 65 mph puts me in the mid 6's per gallon, while 55 at 78,000 puts me in the mid to high 7's per gallon.

I'm out here for the money, not the opportunity to take a nap. Keep the left door shut, and watch the same high-speed trucks pass you two, three, four times a day - then park next to them at the truckstop at the end of the day. Those folks are usually still asleep when I depart in the morning as well.

 

Well if they are obsolete, then maybe more companies should be going back to age old specs on trucks because specing out a truck to get its best milage at 10,15 or 20 mph under the speedlimits is stupid, pure and simple.

It really pisses me off when I come up behind a 55 mph truck on ND highway 281 (65mph). This is a pretty busy 2 lane road with alot of blind hills and curves. Good luck finding a safe time to pass. I usually end up stuck behind the dang thing for an 1 hr to 1 1/2 hrs.

 

Economics my man. Fuel prices above $4 per gallon make the fuel bill larger than the payroll - formerly the number one place to control expenses. The biggest payback on the fuel bill is slowing down.

Given that there is no way one can "drill, baby, drill" out of the current energy mess (controlling 2% of known reserves while consuming 20% of the worlds energy supply) - the only place that fuel prices will go is up as supplies tighten due to increased demand from India and China. Adapt and overcome, or go bankrupt.

If that's me, I use channel 19 to try and get that faster guy around me in the most expeditious manner I can - including slowing down while he passes. If he's one of the morons that doesn't have that CB on... well he's going to be back there awhile until there's a place I can move aside to let him pass.

Sorry you're inconvenienced, but that's life - isn't it?

 

Well if you spec a truck to get good fuel economy in the 65+ mph range then it would be no different on economy then specing a truck to get the best economy at lesser speeds.

I did drive a truck that got better then 6 mpg for a couple years. It was a Volvo with a VED 12 in it. Honestly, that truck pulled the same milage at 75+ as it did at less then 65. The truck was a POS and could not stay out of the shop for more then a couple weeks.

Do I wish there was something I could do to get better milage out of this bridged cat??? Sure I do. I have tried slowing down, tried progressive shifting, tried everything short of just having the truck towed around by someone else. Well I have not gotten it tuned by Mr Haney but I am working with the boss on that.

The only time I get better then 4 mpg is when I am pulling a reefer or empty. Our Aero style trucks are about the same. I suppose I could run lighter loads but then I wouldn't make any money since we get paid a percentage of the load which means the heavier I run, the more I get paid.

I don't run channel 19 often on the CB. We have a company channel that we run or we call it the Farm. We use that channel since there is less traffic on it and we are not bothering many people with our chatter.

 

Hope it works out fer ya!

 

That is pretty myopic. Fuel is not the only savings. Wear on equipment and components and tires also goes way down when operating slower. It may all be a wash, but it is spurious to think that running faster will always produce a net gain. In some operations it will. In most it will not.

 

That's not something your average company-driver type even considers. It is when you start paying for it.

 

True. The specs need to be right to make it all work. It is really not doable to make a truck gets its best mpg by running slower if it is well outside the optimum power band of the engine, just like one will not get good mpg if running above the optimum power band of the engine. But it is also true, that if running slower, one can drop a gear and put it back into the engines sweet spot and get the best of everything... best operating band of the engine and decreased fuel consumption by not pushing so much air in front of you. And if one really goes about it right, they can have the spec's right so that they can run in direct drive most of the time for the speed they want to run in, and then have a gear or two above that if they need to step up the pace. That is the principle behind speccing taller rear end ratios with something like an 18 speed tied to 2.64, 2.79, or 2.85 rear end ratios. Unfortunately, most truck buyers, especially fleet buyers, have little clue what they are doing in spec'ing a truck drive train.

True, a person running 55 on two lanes, thru small towns, etc will not average 54, but the spread is even more so when running faster. Also the wear on brakes and other components is greater when stretching out the spread between the slow moments and the fast ones. It takes less braking to drop from 55 or 60 down to 35 in town than it does going from 65 or 70 down to 35. Also it takes more fuel to get back up to 65 or 70 than it would to get to 55 or 60.

 

Maybe Rat should consider changing his modus operandi. Here you are trying to be considerate of faster drivers, but they expect you to be out of their way and don't want to communicate with you. Sad these changing times.