Is cruise control an industry wide standard in 18 wheelers?

My oxygen tank and 2 gallon big gulp mug are all the cruise control I need

 

You used a stick and wedge assembly back in the old days. Flatten throttle on the floor, stick the stick on it, wedge into dash, pull trigger clamp and wait 50 miles before you have to do something with it again. Those old howlers wound out might do 65 or so with traffic loaded wound out. If you wanted to reduce speed a little bit, pull trigger on stick a smidge and it will come up off floor a bit.

Cruise control started for me about 6 years in I suppose. early 90's I had a couple of pre-94 trucks that were so fast that they ran outside the limits of cruise. Not that you are going to have it on at the speeds where things come at you pretty fast. I had one that would accept a 130 mph cruise. But there was no fuel pump output on it until 116 so.. all it did was coast from 130 down to 116 then build power and torque as fuel started flowing again. That was interesting.

Gravity mountain is the other cruise. Let her go. Eventually you will reach a stable speed if the grade is less than a certain percentage. Say 5% But if anything happens at all then.. Well I guess I'll see you over the other side someday.

Today's trucks are getting too plush. I push back against that for the good of the young ones coming in. I don't mind a little bit of something here and there. But working towards Ottos? No thanks. We already have freaking cars that do things people refuse to do.

 

I was driving a Pete 379 , an '05 I think, had the cruise on and tapped the brake to release it and the brake would not shut the cruise off. Turns out a prior driver had bumped the plastic cover on the fuse block with his left foot and it kept falling down on the floor. So he puts it in a sleeper cubby and doesn't tell anyone about it. He puts his foot back into the fuses and knocks out 3 or 4 fuses.....so I don't know where he has put the plastic cover, which has the fuse diagram on the inside of it. So I don't know what amperage fuse goes where.....I call the shop and they route me back there to fix it. I had called the prior driver to ask him where the cover was, and he called me back after I was back to the shop and had it fixed..........Pete clutches are not suspended on that model, they go into the floor.....and that reduces leg room, so guys stretch their left leg out into the corner of the firewall where the fuses are. The plastic covers don't fit well and are easily bumped loose.....bad design issue. Fortunately for me, I had time to disengage the cruise manually and then hit the brakes....could have been a lot worse if I needed to hard brake, as I would not have been able to.

 

This was cruise control back "in the day".

 

This was the one I used - with a string on it

 

I'm with you.
Use the cruise every chance.
Generally have it set right around the 62 mark.
Quite often run right around 76000, when I'm not running OD loads, and I find that I get the best control, the best fuel mileage right around that 62 mark.

 

I don't think car haulers know how to use it . I dread getting behind of them , 57-->72-->59-->66-->70 , then you go to pass them and they take off , then get off at the next exit .. happens too often to be a coincidence

But yes , most trucks have cruise .

 

For about the first 3 months driving, I never used the cruise. It makes me feel like I am less in control. Even now it is still a weird feeling to have the truck power up a hill and I'm not touching the accelerator. I still won't use the cruise at night, even if I just woke up, or if I am in any way tired.

I try to give myself any chance, however slight, to survive in the event of a crash. The surest way for me to recognize when I'm tired to the point that I really need to pull it over(not just like gee I could use a 30) is that I will notice myself speeding up and slowing down for no reason. Not much, just a couple mph. It is noticeable though. My first Swift company truck would do 64; 65-66 with the cruise set. Most of the newer company trucks do 62; 63 with the cruise set. They reward you ever so slightly for setting the cruise, because they see huge gains in fuel mileage. I have noticed an average of 1mpg difference when I had a lot of time on the load to experiment. Not a huge deal for 100 miles, but when you drive almost 2 billion miles every year or two, it's a pretty #### big deal.