Turned Down

While my truck was in the shop this weekend getting its wheel seal fixed, it was also serviced. Unfortunately during the service it got turned down from 68 mph to 65 mph. When I go the truck I was pleasantly surprised to find that it could go 68 MPH both with the cruise on and with it off, some of our trucks can only do this with the cruise control on. I think this is because these trucks also have the Vorad system, much like the truck I borrowed this weekend. The annoying part is that it will, and did add 15 minutes to my trip down to Spring Hill yesterday.

I can expect to lose 3 miles every hour assuming a constant top speed, considering I only slow down when I have to, this can add up. Of course in Ohio there is no way I reach this top speed, but for at least four hours I am in a 70 MPH zone, which adds up to 12 miles lost, thus the extra 15 minutes added to the trip.

Looking at it, I really don't think I am going to be saving that much fuel, but we shall see, since I have been keeping track of my miles per gallon for the past several weeks. The reason that this is annoying is that sometimes to I need every bit of three hours to get to Glendale, KY where IdleAire is available. So if I am for some reason unable to make it there, I may end up idling the night away, which pretty much blows the theory of fuel savings out of the water.

Tonight I will put all my data into a spread sheet and really take a look at it. If I can prove that it results in not enough fuel savings, maybe I can get them to turn me back up. It will also be interesting to compare directly the fuel savings between the automatic I drove over the weekend to my truck. I can do this because I have the exact same fuel points for both trips.

Time to get going, have to pretrip the truck and get myself on the road, my ten hour break is over.