Fuel planning

I totally get the concept of passing fuel stops and stretch out the fuel in the tank to get the cheaper fuel, but is it really gonna break your business to put a splash of 20 gallons to guarantee that you'll make it to the cheap fuel?

Run out once or twice.....you'll be convinced that the splash of more expensive fuel was well worth it.

 

What I used to do is get loaded, calculate the miles the trip paid and divide by my mpg- about 5 mpg estimate then divide that by how ever many states I had to run through, trying to buy a little fuel in just about every state I went through to cover the IFTA expense. But usually purchased anywhere between 65-85 gallons a day-- enough to run a full day's miles off til the next fuel stop if necessary regardless of IFTA. Priority 1 was to not run out of fuel, priority 2 cheapest fuel possible, priority 3 IFTA and so on down the line.

Nowadays, I just buy cheapest fuel, my carrier pays the IFTA directly. I still pay for it indirectly based on the lower spectrum CPM I am paid. So on this trip of 2200 miles I overbought fuel and will be tankering fuel into the next week's worth of miles.

 

Company driver so I have generated fuel stops... One thing I've noticed is it takes alot of fuel to get going again, how many lights to stop at, steep on ramp, how long is the wait? Quite often it would have been better to just get fuel wherever it was the truck stopped for the day or shower. Stopping just for fuel is kinda inefficient for money and time.

 

I always filled at half tanks. Daily if necessary, Fuel = life in winter. Always filled after delivery. It's a blunt force planning but has not failed me yet. As a team we burnt all of the fuel 300 plus useable out of something like 340 total in 30 hours So fueled daily. Sometimes twice a day. Our bill for fuel to FFE in 9 months exceeded 85,000 dollars based on fuel prices then. Prices doubled the day of 9-11 to almost 6 a gallon. My fleet paid it without complaint because we were bound across the GW from toledo for conn. load of medicines that were in need in NYC. We filled twice a day regardless of fuel in tanks, it was a sort of wartime thinking then.

Once we had a truck that had a single tank of 150 gallons, fueling three times a day sometimes. It's disgusting. Never again. That was one of the reasons I quit the fleet then, ATS years ago.

Once with the FLD, we were requested not to fuel in cali due to too many trucks filling fuel in cali one week (Related to total fuel billing and miles in a particular state.. way above my paygrade.) so we baby sat that tractor to get 1600 miles out of whatever we had when got to Arizona we were thirsty. We finally filled it and it was glorious, Im not sure how much was on the bottom of the tanks that day, they were essentially empty. About ready to poach fuel from that reefer maybe if we would not able to fill...

 

Totally disagree with that concept. If you drive economically, you won't burn that much more fuel. Coasting to anticipated stop signs, lights, turns, etc., easy acceleratin acceleration will reduce gotten consumption tremendously.

The amount of city streets involved to get to a fuel stop are minimal. The bigger factors are in the main highways, wind, terrain, & speed.

 

When I'm in Canada I buy all of it from the esso key stops. They give me a healthy discount. I know exactly the distance to the next one so it works out for me.
In usa I find the best price within my range. I get a daily email with the posted prices and my discount. Also am heavy often so I am playing the weight gamble probably 1/3 of the time. I have identified several fuel stops that always have a good price for me. I don't run all that wild.

 

Indeed. Money and horses. Paradoxiacally the more horse you had the less work and fuel burn per hour needed to pull a mountain. If you could settle for a lower than top gear at 40 or so and pull above 1300 instead of flat on the floor... you save fuel.

It costs fuel to apply power to move 40 ton from nothing, we used to drift up route one in Jersey at less than posted or 6 over posted to make sure every light was green all the way to 287. Makes for a snappy less fuel burn to get going.

 

I find it almost amusing how many owner-ops praise the benefits of saving 2 or 3 cents a gallon by trading at this truck stop or that truck stop, but drive trucks that get maybe 5.5 mpg, 6.5 mpg on a good day