Truck Load Rates Halt 8 Week Slide 2.0

Not if your lucky but I have wore glasses for 40 years so I figured it was coming one day. I had to get them 6-7 years ago. They sucked at first but I got used to it.

 

Among other things...
Dentures
Spinal stenosis
Carpal tunnel,
Psoriasis
Hip replacement
Knee replacement,
Gout
COPD
There's more but it's time for my nap.

 

I'm only 62 but it seems I'm falling apart quickly. When I was still driving I was always fighting lower back problems. Since I quit driving my back has been great until 3 nights ago. Got up to take a leak at 3AM and my back went out standing in front of the toilet. Just a very sharp pain with a muscle spasm. I couldn't move and I managed to inch my way to the counter and wait for the pain to pass. It didn't, and I passed out. Hit the floor like a 280 pound bag of rocks. My wife said it felt like a car hit the house and she ran in and found me out cold. I managed to somehow fall against the toilet and sheered both bolts off the floor. Got an x-ray earlier today and I have a compression fracture in my lower back. Doctor just told me to take it easy and it should heal up. If it doesn't I'll go in for surgery and get them fused. The worst part about it all is that my daughter is getting married this coming Saturday, and I have to walk her down the isle. Hoping things improve over the next few days.

 

Hopefully you get to feeling better. Had a friend pass out at his house one day while walking down his steps to front door. He went right through the glass door and cut himself so bad they had to send him to ER for Emergency surgery to save his life. Getting old sure does not seem like fun these days.

 

old people say “It’s better than the alternative“
Bifocals didn’t make my list, but if I can’t chew a steak I’m checking out.

 

Steak is number one on my list. Love me some filet mignon!

 

I've had bifocals since I was 45 or so. They are lineless, no one knows, doesn't bother me. I'd be pretty self conscious if I had big thick Coke bottles with lines through them like they used to have.

You get what you get.

I raised two kids that had bifocals from the crib. 16 year old has great eyes now, no glasses but my other one will always have vision problems.

 

I’m going to end up with a pretty decent comparison of speed vs mpg this week. Last Saturday I left and had 5 drops on Mon/Tues in ABQ, Tucson, and Phoenix. I loaded one of our loads back to MN and delivered yesterday. I drove that round as I normally do. 65-67 mph. Yesterday I grabbed a trailer that has 5 drops set up for Mon\Tues in ABQ, El Paso, Tucson, and Phoenix. Only this trip I’m running on recaps and I gotta scoot to make my drops on time before I’m out of hours in Phoenix Tuesday afternoon.

 

Good luck with that.
The weight and wind direction is what mainly determines the mpg.
Since my coming back to drive regionally vs my regular excursion to West Coast, I did slow down by at least 5-7 mph and these days I seldom exceed 65 mph. Getting slower must be one of those aging things too. I see no difference in mpg.
Physics? Sure, but only in a laboratory it will be evident that slowing down will decrease mpg. The biggest difference I see is when I pull light loads. If I drive 67 or 62 with the same weight, not so much. Maybe If I tried to compare 70mph with 55mph... but I would not have patience for the experiment. Of course, the wind rules the mpg just as the weight but the speed ... not so much in practice as in theory.
Let Kevin ride his coach at 56 mph.

 

You’ll still get better mpg’s at a slower speed in the wind or whatever the condition is at the time. I’ll run my usual speed no matter what the wind is doing unless I’m real light. I track every tank of fuel on paper, but I don’t really obsess over a single tank, or really the week for that matter. I watch my four week average the closest because that’s where you can spot a downward trend and start looking for issues. It will be interesting to me to see what happens running 70-75 with the same outbound load (other than one stop) and getting fuel in the same spots. I wouldn’t complain if I got the same reload back to Minnesota again.