Petition to oppose FMCSA speed limiter mandate

ok do this. next load u haul. pick a speed that ur gonna cruise down the interestate at.. lets pick 60 mph for example... 60mph is your all day cruising speed. drive until the end of your shift, lets say 10 hours... i can gurantee you, you will not cover 600 miles over the course of 10 hours at 60mph cruising speed.. dont matter where ur at or where ur going . its impossible, unless that truck is on a dyno at a constant 60mph and never slows down or speeds up, not even 1 mph. and they dont start the clock until the truck is up to speed... otherwise over the course of a day, we are constantly slowing down and speeding up so if ur crusing speed is 60mph.. then your average speed over the course of the day is going to be somewhere around 53mph. maybe 55-57 if you know how to keep the left door closed and its mostly flat land...so on the other side of that, think of a truck that blows past you doing 80mph.. but he passes you 4 or more times in the day.. and you end up parking at the same truck stop at the end of your shift... he averaged the same speed as you but burned more fuel to do it... going faster only helps if you know how to keep the left door closed..see what im getting at here?

@Cattleman84 is one of the most efficient drivers that i know when it comes to this..i have seen him cover 650+ miles a day , everyday in a 68mph truck running out west and on elogs.. there is an art to that and not many drivers can do it.

 

Really wish those ############# s would keep their noses behind their desks in DC for a change. Morons are completely destroying this industry.

 

I get exactly what your saying. Out west it's far easier to average 600 plus. Anywhere east of Kansas City, it's going to be difficult to get past 550 or 600, especially if you're driving during the day time. I've done that exact experiment. Speed don't mean as much as people think. I agree with you, efficiency is key. I don't run past 600 miles unless necessary; reason being, I like to run with balance, and if you're run is 550 or less, you know for sure you can make that with the time given. I think load planning plays a bigger role than the speed of the truck. Even if a driver does 700 one day, I guarantee he ain't doing 700 the next, or every day for that matter.

 

I run 65 mainly because its exhausting to spend 70 hours a week passing other slow trucks and I guess I get fuel savings as well. When I do pass I do it fast by speeding up to the speed limit. Sitting beside another truck passing 1mph faster is dangerous.

Anything less than 70mph would be devastating to me. I'm not going to be one of those guys spending all day in the hammer lane blocking traffic. Just when you think politicians couldn't make this job more miserable...

 

Same here. I used to never log more than 600 miles before the ELD mandate passed because I was always worried DOT would try to cite me for speeding. Now so much data is out from the ELDs that they prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that 60 mph theory was not really worth much. Goes runners are covering much more than that in 11 hours than the government would ever like to have admitted in the past.

 

So I am not gonna read all of this thread but gonna make one comment I don't think anyone has about the speed limiting. I spec'd my truck to run a certain speed and if I don't run it like that then the government should have to pay to have my truck spec'd to that speed limiter.

 

If the money is good I do it. But the money has to be worth it. I can drive 700 miles every day for a week strait if I can get in and out of loads fast enough. You need that speed to get that extra load or two during your 70 and the money makes up for the fuel cost if done right.

 

That seems to be a difficult concept for people to grasp.

 

If it so safe to have truck speeds governed then why not just mandate that speed limit and hand out speeding tickets? Why set governor on the trucks? If speed limiting trucks is so safe then why did we ever change from 55mph? Are California highways safer than anywhere else? There still 55mph right? Illinois just recently raised trucks from 60 to 70?