How to make money in trucking....????

Keep the left door closed

 

Shouldn't have to. Since I got my reefer, I have had more hometime than ever and similar revenue on fewer miles driven. Seems like a good position to be in.

 

Making some big assumptions there.

 

Making money in trucking might be as easy as ABCDE

A= Attitude
B= Budget
C= Communication
D= Discipline
E= Experience

And also you'll need to win the lottery, but that's such a small detail let's not focus on that.

 

The actual savings will vary depending on your starting mpg. For example, if you are currently getting 4 mpg and increase that to 5 mpg the savings is much higher than if you are increasing from 6 to 7 mpg.

Pulling hills are relatively few miles in a given route. However, they can consume a large amount of fuel if a driver chooses to maximize speed and the turbo is giving maximum boost. For example, driving my brother's 2003 KW T2000 in 13th with maximum boost we got 2.7 mpg, and we could pull many a grade at 62-70 mph. However, at 2.7 mpg you are paying for the privilege of driving, and your more fuel efficient sections of driving are subsidizing your uphill joyride. I was able to take many of those same hills at about 4.0 mpg (closer to gross profit break even), which is a win because your larger sections of more fuel efficient driving will now become profit instead of paying off your "speed debt" going up those hills.

Most of the time that 30 minutes saved by speeding up hills results in watching those critical reruns of NCIS at a truck stop. Since I'm not a big NCIS fanboy I would much prefer to pay attention to the process of driving efficiently and "win" a few mpg battles up those hills than to bore myself to tears in the TV room. That's more satisfying for me. Mileage for others may vary....

 

so it's not important to have a truck that is tuned up and running efficiently and can RUN better when under heavy load.

It's all in driving slow and only driving slow.

 

I think the most important things that a driver can have for learning to drive efficiently is an mpg display and a boost gauge. There's an inverse correlation between boost and mpg and its basically geometric. Learning to drive without going over 50-60% boost is the key to pulling hills or accelerating with highest mpg.

While a well tuned drive train is going to help maximize your mpg, it is really only giving you the potential for better mpg. How you drive is the key to maximizing fuel efficiency.

 

so it's better to take 45-60 minutes to climb a grade than it is to take 20 minutes?

 

Well, if saving 25-40 minutes is critical for making an appointment, then you probably need to forgo the fuel savings. In long haul trucking I've rarely been in a situation where saving 25-40 minutes is critical. The norm for our dispatches gets us to destination hours in advance. Think of it this way, if you have a dispatch with 30 hours of driving ahead of you, what percentage does an extra 0.66 hours represent? It's very small. However, if by "saving" that 0.66 hours (which won't matter whether you make your appointment or not) you end up burning an additional 10 gallons of diesel to pull that grade... well then you might as well pull a couple of Andrew Jackson's out of your wallet and throw them out the window. Where are you going to get those back? By coasting super efficiently on the downhill side?

During a 30 hour drive time transit there are ample opportunities to "save time" by simply stocking your cab with food so you can avoid waiting in line at Subways, or managing your Off Duty or On Duty time more efficiently so you can use your Drive time with as little non driving time as possible during the transit. There are a lot more hours to be gained by time management than by speeding up a few hills.

 

Most contracts are based on 57 MPH , love the ones that have to HAMMER DOWN , then get there 2 hours early and the cry about having to wait to get unloaded and gripe that dispatch has nothing for them when they call in that they arrived ( Early ), but have something 2 1/2 hours later.