Long panels below trailers reduce windrag?

Maybe, but is 1% enough to recover the purchase cost? They also gotta factor in repairs when their drivers tear them up. Ours seem like they're indestructible (unless you get t-boned by a car) but I can imagine if you get enough Schneider drivers together, one of them is gonna figure out a way to tear them up.

The belly skirts are REQUIRED in California now, on new trailers. That's probably the only reason Schneider justifies the expense.

 

heard someone call'em Pentecostal panels
bout fell out of the seat
If fleets would teach folks how to drive they could recover 2%
without the bolt on expenses.

 

Or if they would quit turning the power down until you have to go full throttle for 5 miles just to hit 60mph.

 

Hate to chill your seat,but the "power" is never "cut"
Companies with " s l o w " trucks have slow trucks because the
" S P E E D " has been limited.
All of the Motor Manufactures have explicit demands on running
above or below OEM spec or it voids their liability and your SOL come warranty claim.

Your truck is running all the horsepower it has to run to get you to your
company's profit target.
600 HP to run 65mph isn't logical,get it pulling down in the lower rpms
and the motor will draw on reserves to maintain itself in the torque range,thats logical as well as profitable.

All the power you need is there,sad part is "you" aren't the one that determines your needs.

 

NO. Some companies turn the POWER down as well. Some even have their air ride pressure gauges hooked up to the computer to turn the power down even more when there's a light load. I had a friend who drove for Star (Morton, IL) who was CONVINCED that his truck would pull better if all the weight was in the nose of the trailer. He said tail-heavy loads would slow the truck down, but if he ran his tandems back, it would pull better. Knowing that's IMPOSSIBLE for axle weight differences to affect your acceleration, (unless you're in snow or something and you're spinning em) I told him he was nuts, then one day I figured it out.

I told him to run his tandems all the way forward and watch his turbo gauge, then pull over and run em all the way back and try it again. His turbo gauge was boosting more with the tandems back, with more weight on the drives. The only possible explanation for that is the computer reduces power based on how much air pressure is in the drive axle air bags.

My company's trucks aren't like that. Ours are left at the factory POWER setting, 450 horse, but set at 65 mph, and our engine governors are turned UP. Stock for a Cummins is 1500 or 1600 RPM or so, our company turns them up to 1800 and they'll run like a raped ape. With a heavy load, I've felt my steer axle suspension top-out before when the power comes on full after a shift from 2nd to 3rd. (granny gear is 1st, I only use it when starting on a hill or sliding tandems)

 

If they are in fact cutting HP to edge higher profits then thats a "control" option they have the privilege of.THEY OWN THE TRUCK!!

Love how you new riders have it all figured out,what in the world are you doing driving for a low rent fleet when you have all this expertise ?
Tandem position denotes HP ratings on motors

Gotta love the conspiracy theorist that dream up their "choice" of Companies fault at making their world less then perfect.
If a "COMPANY" chooses a business option,its in the drivers benefit to
do as they agreed to do when they signed the application,
work under the "agreed" terms.

To late to run with the Big Dogs!,their already running . . . . .

 

Well, my last truck ran like hell with the exact same engine so I think I know what kind of power it's supposed to have. The three trucks before this one also had the exact same engine that pulled like hell. The one before that had a slightly smaller version of this engine that still pulled harder. And the mileage is worse on this one. In fact, this is the slowest, weakest truck with the worse mileage I have ever been in. On top of that, the guy that ordered these trucks from the factory doesn't even work there anymore. The current head man thinks it's a worthless piece of #### with a junk engine and wants to get rid of all of them.

On top of that, you haven't the slightest idea of what I'm driving, how it's set up, how they want it to be set up, or whether I know how to set it up.

Yes, they do. Anyone who's been in this business for more than 5 minutes knows that. My company isn't hitting the profit target. The mileage is terrible. There is nothing in the lower RPM's. This thing has to downshift to pull an empty trailer up a normal sized hill. Loaded I've seen it drop to 25mph in 70 trying to get up a bigger hill. It's re-tarded, which is probably why the guy that ordered them 6 years ago doesn't work here anymore. He didn't know what he was doing.

That's also bs on the warranty. I drove one for over a year that was turned up to 600hp and we got warranty work done on it more than once, no problem.

Sad part is the boss said to me, "I wish someone would tell me how to fix these trucks so they'd run right." That puts me right in the position to determine my needs, now doesn't it.

 

Ok, YOU explain why the amount of weight on the drive axles would affect how much turbo boost he was getting!

Tandems back, heavy on the drives, full turbo boost. Tandems forward, same load 10 minutes later, less weight on the drives, & he wasn't getting full boost. Next day he looked at the boost gauge while accelerating at full throttle with an empty trailer and it was only boosting about halfway.

It's not as far-fetched as you think. What's to stop a fleet or a manufacturer from feeding air ride pressure data to the computer to reduce power with lighter loads? If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, ...

They've got all kinds of crap added to trucks these days in the name of saving a few bucks on fuel.

Take Covenant Transport's "optimized idle" system for example: You couldn't idle the truck, it would shut off and start back up and cycle like that all night, waking you up every time. It's miserable if you're trying to sleep in the daytime. Right when it starts to cool off in the cab, the engine shuts off. 20 minutes later when it's 130 degrees in there, it starts back up.

Another thing I hated about Covenant's trucks was after climbing a hill and using a lot of fuel, the governor speed would drop from 68 to 65 for a while. (This was back in 04 when the trucks would run 68)