He's either spinning the turbo too much....wayyyy too much or selling fuel. 1.5 mpg over the same route with the same truck and the same weight is alot. I like the idea of going for a drive. Bet he gets good mileage that day.

 

He's got a year in, trained by England, and drove for Melton the past 6 months.


On my pulling the truck out of gear and coasting. I do it for maybe 10-20 seconds max, just long enough to slow down to tap the rpms up to drop in a lower gear, I skip gears, I don't downshift into every single gear. I am not coasting for minutes on end or anything. I don't see how this habit would get me killing someone. I don't tailgate, and I don't tend to speed (although at times I run 65 on the freeways out here because I prefer to keep up with the flow of traffic instead of doing 55 like we should, but I keep a safe following distance). Maybe if I coasted down the grapevine out of gear, but not long enough to slow down to shift down 2 gears. At this point I'm tired of defending my driving habits so please leave it at that. If anyone wants to carry on about this, then please make your own topic about it and leave me out of it. Thanks.


I've talked to him about the fuel issue, believe me. He told me he knew it was not getting good mileage and is blaming it on being over loaded and trying to keep up with another driver. I am giving him a week of run time to see where we end up now that he knows I'm not happy with this situation, I also told him what to do if he thinks he is overloaded from the plant (he should be watching that anyway so he won't get a scale ticket). I have followed him all of one time, and I was not "sneaking" he knows what my truck looks like and I was always in plain sight, the other drivers saw me, if he was paying attention he would have too.

After having my buddy take the truck out today thats what we ended up thinking he is doing, just mashing down on that throttle when ever he can, and maybe he is shifting at too high of RPMs as well.. I'll give him a good week of driving to see if it improves since we had our talk, but he did tell me that every truck he has driven has a drop in fuel milage when he gets in it, so maybe thats not a good sign.

 

I realize that it IS illegal to travel more than one truck length out of gear. But perhaps some teach to always use that length. I ran into this info on an truck book keepers site. Don't know any more than this but it seems to be talking just like floored. It says to do it to get better mpg, which is what she is saying. http://www.attrucktax.com/drivinghab...ion_&_Braking_

 

They are referring to coasting in gear, not out of gear. The truck creates very little friction and rolling resistance when taken out of gear. Coasting in gear is fine. Coasting out of gear is illegal.

 

If your fuel mileage dropped that much I'd say he was siphoning off the fuel. What kind of vehicles does he own? Family. friends, neighbors???

Hauling 45k in the box from Great Falls to Portland I got 5.95mpg from my usual 6.5 hauling 35K from PDX to Phoenix. My last backhaul to PDX I got 8.8mpg fully loaded with pillows (8k). Wish I had more of those loads.

 

You need to see if the places he fuels at, are reputible. He could easily fuel up yor truck then put some extra in the guys tank that he's running with. Not too much, as this would be way to obvious. Just enough for him to collect, let's say $60 to $100 a week cash from someone he is givng fuel to at a cheaper price. Ask the attendent where he fuels at. It's that, or you are just a super slow, relaxed, carefull, non-speeding, fuel saving driver. :P

 

I would be very concerned as to where the fuel is going to also. I worked for a fuel company (mostly residential heating) a while back and one of the managers was trying to figure out why his numbers were always off. Turns out the guy was going across town and selling the fuel off the truck for cash, and filling up his personal truck.

With my current job, i am getting better than 4.5 mpg and i am driving a 17 year old transfer truck that has seen better days. I haven't jumped into the whole o/o game, but i do like to know that i am not burning up money that the company could be saving, or atleast using else where.

Just out of curiosity, what kind work do you do? I've thought about trying to get on with and o/o as a transfer driver, but right now am fairly content only driving maybe 5 minutes to work 8) and the owners have benn keeping me fairly busy.

BTW...nice looking truck 8) and good luck with the baby.

 

I would be very concerned as well, I drive a 1985 Freightliner, with a 350 BCC hauling logs, gross weight avg 88,000, in Mountains, and avg 5.5 mpg.

 

It is not uncommon for "company" drivers in the Valley to sell fuel. I had many offers over at the 49'er, and at stops south of Sac-town, to pay cash for fuel at $1.50 a gallon, versus the $2.45 plus that fuel was then..2003-2005.

If you have a family member or friend that you trust..have them do some stealthy watching...especially at fuel stops.

If nothing else...start limiting fuel to just what would be needed for the daily work, plus limit where he can buy fuel as well. On a network especially, you can do that by phone...and the Network Administrator should understand what you are trying to do.
Being in Central Cali ...even with using a cardlock network..you must have had a 35 to 40 cent per gallon rise in fuel the last few weeks. That right there will be part of your increased fuel cost's, but it isn't what would kill the mpg's. Even poor driving skills is hard to believe that big a drop.

 

I agree. I wonder if he was purposely driving like an idiot the day he was watched by your buddy. And then he made that comment about every truck getting poor fuel mileage when he drove it......who says something like that?