IF money wasn’t an Issue.....choices

Freightliner Cascadia with air ride steer axle. DD15 engine and DT-12 auto shift transmission with the 8 battery electric APU/optimized idle system. My truck has the 8 battery electric APU and it good when sleeping so far, truck has 109,000 miles. It's not the best for 34 hour reset because it's designed just heat and cool the sleeper.

I don't like the emissions box on Freightliner because it 1 box setup. When the DOC filters go bad you have to replace the whole emissions box for $13,000

Volvo truck ride nice and I hear about the new down speeding setup Volvo has works good. They seem to have trouble with injector cups on engines.

 

Even at $5/gal you don’t need $2k every 30 hours.

 

My friends glider does well.
Was built 4 or 5 years ago, a 389 Pete that pulls a tri axle cattle trailer that he also owns and gets an average of 7.2 mpg I think he said when I talked to him last.
His goal was efficiency, consistency, reliability and durability, kind of like a race car engine.
He had a Series 60 built by a professional engine builder, balanced rods, crank, pistons, best of everything available, everything new, very high attention to detail, block, cylinder head, manifolds, turbo, lots of precision machining, every moving part and passage way optimized, big dollars.
Capable of making much more power, but set at 565 hp to keep it in one chunk for as long as possible.

Considering most cow haulers run a couple mph over the speed limit, (he's no exception), and pull a parachute behind them, he gets pretty decent economy pulling a tri axle at over 100k lbs.

 

It depends on your budget. Me personally? I can’t and couldn’t justify the money that people want for a decent long hood glider. They’re asking new emission truck prices for a glider with 300k on it. Comes down to what you want. I own a 579 with MX13 and work with a bunch of long hoods with big engines. And now that I’m taking 6 weeks off I’m getting all the “it must be nice” comments from them. And basically the difference in money that I have is fuel mileage and payload.

 

I was being... somewhat overdone. Main thing was whatever fuel she burns keep that card open.

There are times I try to be very good and get her close to 8 miles to gallon loaded and some days she will do it. But to average more than that with todays areodymaic creations is pretty good.

 

@bonder45 you must be running 4.33 or 4.56 in that truck to be topped out at 98 km/h.

If you like the truck and trust the truck, why not re-gear to a 3.90 or 3.73? Or are you looking to go to a tandem to free up a little more HP by eliminating the 3rd diff?

Your T800 is a really good bush spec truck. Are you moving away from oilfield and more general freight?

 

5 mpg isn't horrible for a tridrive. Dad's last tridrive was an '07 T800. 530 ISX, 18 speed and 4.10 rears. Think he was around 5.25 to 5.5 MPG.

Bet you'd see a gain with a re-gear because I bet you're tach'd out just holding 60 MPH.

 

Then down the line there is resale value. Just picked up a truck book at the J the other day. Those old 379s and w9s still holding value. I guess? Looks like.