THE ADVENTURES CONTINUE - DFO gets a truck and hops on Schneider's IC Choice Program

Thanks for the heads up, been keeping an eye on that system. Looks like it'll be a coin toss as to whether I'll have to deal with the ice or not tomorrow, all depends on the temperature I guess. I'm sure Charlotte will be an absolute joy with traffic, regardless of the weather tomorrow. I may just deliver the load then just go park at the OC for the night and try to make it back home on Thanksgiving day. I don't know which day is worse for travel, the one before or Thanksgiving day itself. I'm definitely not bobtailing home in the ice though if there is any.

Thanks, it does seem to run a little better but honestly its hard to say, every little thing about a load can make the truck feel totally different.
Looks like my next task will be fixing that leaking hard line that runs to the heater core. I turned on my heat today and watched a little bit of steam come out from the right side of the hood as it dripped a little coolant on the hot exhaust manifold LOL. I may just be able to have someone braze it, I'm not sure if its a crack or a puncture or what. But, its not leaking much at all, just a few drips here and there so no big hurry on that one.

Biggest thing now is the mileage - like I said I'm still not sure if that problem is solved yet or not.

But I look at it this way, lets take that trip from GA up to DE - it was right at 1000 miles and I got about 5 MPG (for the first half at least) -- 1000 miles / 5 MPG * $3.75 = $750 in fuel.

Now, compare it to getting 7 MPG -- 1000 / 7 * $3.75 = $535 in fuel -- that's $215 straight out the stack!! Crazy.

I know the first 500 miles of that trip I did get around 5 MPG - then I cleaned the MAP sensor right after fueling, but I dropped the load in Delaware and then bobtailed all the way home - so that would definitely throw things off a bit. When I fueled in Charlotte on the way down to Mississippi I think I saw about 6.75 MPG hand calculated, but there were just too many variables in that tank (from the trip up to DE, to bobtailing home, to running the truck back an fourth to Cummins, to doing a parked regen, etc) to get a good idea from that calculation.

I picked up a heavy load out of Arkansas today, but when I fueled I only put on 100 gallons due to weight, so I couldn't get a full fill-up to help calculate. Once I get this load to Charlotte I'll head over to the OC and fill up my tanks there and that'll give me a good idea of what I'm actually seeing for MPG when grossing near max, since both loads I pulled this week had me grossing above 75k and I did probably 75% interstate travel at 65MPH.

I'm curious what other drivers are seeing for fuel mileage with what engines?

I know my company Cascadia would do about 6.5-6.8 MPG, but it was still relatively new and I hear they take several hundred thousand miles to break in and then the MPG will improve. Dunno about what kinda mileage the CAT C15s get, never messed with them much.

 

130 miles from delivery in Charlotte, cruising up I-85 north... #2 trailer tire says LOL NOPE and has other plans and blows out. Almost made it.

Now I sit and wait. *** ******.

 

Thank God today is over with, man. Took the tire guy 2 hours to get to me, but once he did he was quick to get me up and running again. After sitting through traffic jam after traffic jam all the way up from Atlanta my 14 was racing me, and winning.

I decided just to deliver the load to Sams club in Charlotte and head over to the Charlotte OC for fuel and will be spending the night here. Didn't have enough hours to make it home, even though I could log line 5 and not run out of driving hours, I would still be operating past my 14-hour period - a big no-no, which I understand.

Got to the OC, fueled, calculated my mileage for the past two loads, which is still crap but it has improved. After having the DPF cleaned I'm seeing 5.5 MPG now running 65MPH (and some 70MPH) grossing 75k+. Better than the 5 MPG from before, but still, CRAP. Although I don't expect to do quite as good as the newest engines, I still think I should be able to get 6.5-7MPG at those weights. So, looks like I'll take off some more of the sensors on the EGR system and clean them (and probably replace one of them) and see which of those is the culprit. If after that the mileage is STILL crappy then its on to checking out the fuel system and looking for the possibility of a leaking return line, etc., although I would expect to see and smell leaking fuel if that was the issue.

So, I'll be here tomorrow morning, anyone else stuck here in Charlotte?

On a side note - cheeseburger report - I was hungry when I got to the OC and of course the cafe is closed and I didn't feel like another peanut butter sandwich for tonight so I bought one of the microwaveable cheeseburgers-in-a-packet from the rotating vending machine. For what it was... honestly not that bad.

I'll try to grab a load for Friday through the weekend, but I don't want to preassign anything to me until after I get home tomorrow - if I do, then I can't log line 5. I've been eyeing a couple different loads so we'll see which ones are still around by the time I get home. I'll be trying to run some lighter loads until I get the fuel mileage issue sorted out for obvious reasons, not to mention that lighter loads are just easier in general.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!