Crete Carrier - A Year In Review - Fall 2013 Going Forward

I hear all the 2018's are 12-speed Automatics that have a hard time climbing ant hills and lurch driver around starting from a stop as they start out in 1st gear.....Wonder who the dumb sob is that thought this was a great idea ......

 

Lincoln will tell you it was due to the fuel savings from automatics. Schneider switched to all automatics a couple of years ago. I sure hope they've got plenty of 2017s left because I'm 4-5 months away from hitting 500K and I won't drive an automatic. Period. If that means leaving then so be it.

 

I doubt if they take off in first gear, I did talk to a nice female Crete driver and she had the automatic, she just got it, and said her fuel mileage was up from her last truck. She said the auto was getting 7.1,
I'm getting 7.6, I dropped a tenth when they lowered my 9th gear rpm range.

 

It's the way of the trucking world. Soon, it will be like buying a car, if you want a standard, you'll have to pay extra.

Magnum's Petes get better mileage than that, with heavy ### reefer freight...I thought Freightliner was the #### when it comes to fuel mileage

 

I idle a lot, and it is a struggle to get up to speed the way they have the truck cut back, but I guess on paper if you cut the fuel back enough, somehow you save fuel.

 

I had a mechanic that use to say "the more horses you have, the more you have to feed them"...but I told him, "if you have to few horses they have to work harder and eat more to do the same job"...my 430/470 series 60 with a higher torque rating was getting better mileage than the company's 430's were back then, and I idled and drove kinda close to the speed limit, sorta. (At least that's what I told safety)

 

They are slow from a start, as they're programed for economy, but they sure don't lurch, and after up to speed they pull the hills way better than any other truck I've had at Crete. Was really skeptical at first about backing, because I'd heard all of the stories, but can creep in reverse, probably slower than I did with the 10 speed . So far I really like it.

 

I guess with all the automatics, they'll sure to hire a bunch of young girls to drive them, maybe they'll do my laundry for me..

 

Now your asset manager can swap jobs with you, and you can be the one riding her butt about getting rolling after 10 hrs and 1 minute.