I'm going to buy a used Schneider Truck

I am still doing good since the economy is great these past 18 months. I would of gone under if it wasnt this good. I am averaging well over $2.50 per mile all miles to the truck. Most of my loaded miles are $3.50 doing stepdeck/flatbed and even dryvan work.

My only real compliant is my poor fuel mileage. From day one, i was only averaging 5.5mpg loaded light or heavy. Gave up on trying to fix this because i have tried a great many things. Truck pulls strong, no smoke, no check engine, removed turbo and tested it and psi is good, overhead adjustments, Air Charge cooler have no leaks, injectors seems to test ok, emission system good, DPF filter cleaned, new radiator etc...

I have almost zero truck issues for 6 months straight. Now just this past 60 days, i put in over 12k into truck. New steer and drived tires, new radiator, new AC compressor and some other minor work. Need to work on suspension because my tires are not wearing out right. Thank god the motor runs smoothly aside from poor mpg. In the 16 months that I have owned this truck, i have put around 150k miles on truck and my odometer shows around 620k now. Easily spent over $35k on maintenance cost so far. At this mileage, many things will start to break and I am replacing components as they fail. I carry a new Starter, main belts, water/oil hose and clamps, and many parts on truck as spare because everything is beginning to fail in the last 60 days and almost everything needs to be special order. I have to special order cooliant hoses because no one carry them.

Being a 2011 Cascadia, almost all the parts needed to be special order since rarely do freightliner dealers have parts for my specific truck. Imagine, Out of 20 or so freightliner dealers i called in all the midwest states on a radiator (chicago, indianapolis, saint louis, columbus, detroit, Nashville. Memphis, knoxville, louisville, charlotte, greensboro, etc...) do not stock my radiator. That was such a dissapointment that most of the big freightliner dealerships do not have most of the parts for my standard 2011 all stock Freightliner Cascadia. You would think that all Cascadia are the same but, they are not.

 

I want full maintenance leases but it may not work well doing over the road. A good example is with Penske. I used to work with a local/regional trucking company that leased all their trucks with Penske in Charlotte, NC. Everytime we take our trucks to the Penske's Charlotte location, they will drop everything they are doing to fix our issues. However, taking the Penske trucks to other Penske's location in NC or SC and they will tell us to wait up to 24 hours before they can get truck in the shop. These other Penske shops pretty much told me to take the truck back to the home terminal where the lease originated because they are busy. So, these full service lease may work well for local trucking companies but not so well with OTR. The whole point of a full service lease is to have minimal downtime and a free rental if truck is down more than 24 hrs. With Over the Road, most of the issues happens while you are out of your home area.

 

My truck on this thread is going to need some major $$$$ put in. 2011 Cascadia DD15, 620k miles, manual 10 speed. It is now eating 2 gallons of cooliant a day and there is no visible leak even after idling all night. Just did oil analysis and oil have no water, but high sodium and potassium. Still run strong and no smoke from muffler pipe. I am getting more blow by than usual from exhaust tube from crank case.

Cooliant looks fine with no oil in it. Engine oil looks fine with no cooliant in it.

Going to take to shop on monday. From what i have gather online and spoken on the phone with a few mechanics, it could be 3 things only. EGR cooler, bad injector cups, or bad Cylinder Heah/Head gasket. I hope it is the EGR cooler only. That will set me back less in repairs and down time.

Anyone have other prediction on the causes of my problem ?