I think things at Wal-Mart are going to change soon, just my observation. I have seen new Wal-Mart daycabs being toted down I-10 lately, I would not be suprised to see companies like Greatwide, USX, Covenant and some othesr take over the OTR operations of Wal-Mart, and Wal-Mart put to use these day cabs out of their localized distribution centers. I may be behind the times on this revelation, but just some of the things I've been observing in the past few weeks.
FWIW, I passed 9 SWIFT trucks today, I might have passed 10 but the fog was so thick at one point I'm not sure if it was a SWIFT truck or an apparition that I passed.
Did you happen to catch the tag numbers? Seriously, thanks...I think that's the only straight answer I've gotten. But, it's all good!
Striker, in response to one of your earlier posts, I've got the MP8 424 I believe, I keep an average of 5.8. I pull on a dedicated lane, 90 miles loaded anywhere between 75,500 and 80,000 and then return those 90 miles empty, I do this 3 times a day for an average of around 525-540 miles a day, we have all new trucks in our fleet with less than 50,000 miles some are getting better MPG than me, but most are lacking even with some being in the 4's, and BTW that regen can be a real pain in the butt, I can't wait to see how many times it regens once it starts getting some miles on it.
From my understanding, it's actually the opposite. We've got most all of our reefer units back because Wal*Mart has ordered and brought in a bunch of their own. They are in the process of phasing out the outside companies pulling their freight and by adding their own units, this seems to be moving ahead.
About a gal an hour on the idle. 4 hours times five days is a nice little chunk of change. That is about 60 bucks a week out the stacks. The wear and tear you talk about is from sitting there idling.
Idling doesn't hurt diesel engines, I keep seeing people talking about needing to do in frames at 600-800k, we have engines that go 1.4-1.8 million with no in frame and they run from daylight to dark. You can say that an engine uses 1 gal an hour idling but, like I said I consistently get 6+mpg. So I don't see any waste. I only see a few people on here getting more than 7mpg. So your argument doesn't stand up.
Okay I made an error in my original comment, my LOV MPG is 5.8, for 154K miles so far, it just dropped today from 5.9 mpg. Once we start getting busy again where I can get some highway miles it will pick back up. My LOV so far, 17% idle, 31% Cruise, 23 % $$, 4 % engine brake. Regen times don't care how many miles you have on the truck, it's based on overall driving. I've had mine regen every day and I've had it go 2 days between regen's, there is no rhyme or reason. When I do a lot of City driving it will regen faster than highway driving, that is the only thing that matters. Also, Mack has a software update for the DPF, if you ahve it done, it is possible to get some oddball responses and/or codes from your truck.
