How much fuel do you really have left when that fuel light comes on

Just more common sense advise from Moose1958

 

Some trucks are paid by the amount of weight they can haul. Less weight = more money.

 

I'll give you that. But..... Will that extra 3-400 lbs. of material pay for the cost of running out of fuel, paying someone to bring you enough fuel to get you to a location to buy fuel, spend the time to get there, pump it, and get back to what you were doing before you ran out of fuel? Or... as Moose 1958 pointed out.... Sucking the crap out of the bottom of your tanks and causing a completely different issue? There is a term for that kind of thinking. Penny wise and pound foolish.

 

Ffs....there are some drivers out here that weigh more than 50 gallons of fuel!

 

I use to be able to get 150-200 miles a line above empty plus my gauge never showed full after a fuel stop. However after a few years if the fuel light comes on and I'm near the line above above empty, I've got maybe 30-40 miles left. Point is it may change over time, software updated if it's digital etc.

I had my first ever ran out of fuel experience in a truck due to this.

 

20 gallons is not much?

 

How much would it cost if you get shut down at a weigh station for being 300 lbs over?

How much would a shipper save if he can run one less truckload a week?

There are a lot of factors that go into deciding how you want to run your truck/fleet. Some ideas are more fruitful than others, but dismissing a strategy out of hand without considering the whole circumstances is unwise.

For me, I like to run my tanks down to save on time. Pumping 50 gallons takes me 4:30 from shutting the truck off to pulling forward, on average. Pumping 150 gallons takes me 9 minutes on average. 3 times the go juice for only twice the time. Adding in the extra time getting off the highway makes a bigger impact in a drivers clock.

For what I'm running right now, those minutes on my 14 matter. 15 minutes can swing my daily earnings by $90. Say I run out of fuel 4 times a year and each time it costs me $400, while running on fumes gets me an extra $100 a week. I've netted at least $3,000 more running on fumes than if I filled up more regularly.

Then you look at cost per gallon. Fueling at the Oak Creek Pilot is usually about .60 per gallon less for me than fueling at the Richfield Kwik Trip. Saving $60 a week on fuel can be worth a little risk.

 

I put a hair over 180 gallons in my International on Friday, with two 120 gallon tanks. I rarely let it get that low, though, I usually fill before I get down to a quarter tank.

 

Big Maude goes 280 if she’s a pound!

 

I first started running the tanks very low when I discovered me (driving nights) and the day driver could run a full shift on full tanks. I was operating past a Love's and if I fueled I could buy 100 gallons per day and I was able to wuickly earn over $800 in reward points.

I now run tanks low to get from one cheap fuel location to another.