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In the last few months I have noticing more semis DWL than usual. Modern tractor trucks have enough power to fly up the hills with the car/SUV traffic stream and encountering a slow truck climbing a hill is nowhere near as common as it used to be back in the 70's. Today I encountered a convoy of two semis DWL, climbing the hills at speeds as low as 40mph with their flashers on and doing into the 70's mph on the downhills. I got in line behind them and followed about 1/8 mile behind them to help improve my mileage.

Sometimes they're loaded heavy on something a bit less than what
they refer to as a "big truck" and *have* to do the crawl. But
as I point out in numerous other places, the load gets there
and likely on time regardless.
.
An occasional problem comes from when these guys are trying to
take their starting run at the hill; in an effort to not lose
a built-up head of steam they tend to tailgate the crap out of
anyone ahead, including in the right lane. That's gotta stop.
.
_H*

Come to think of it, seeing the black smoke flying out of the stacks when they are going uphill hasn't been as common around here either...

You might see a little, but they used to floor it up these hills and leave a huge cloud.


But as I point out in numerous other places, the load gets there and likely on time regardless...

My mom had the handle of "Slow Poke", but she had the highest safety rating in the company and half the time got there before the speeders. She made up the time by not wasting it at the truck stops.
/shrug

Hi Basjoos:

___Thanks for reporting this as it is indeed a good sign. I hope to see a lot more of it in the near future but some of them "just don't get it" :(

___When I was doing the 50, 55, 60, 65 and 70 mph steady state CC runs on I-94 in the Super Duty two weeks ago, I was still being passed by a number of 18-wheelers when running 70 mph on a 65 mph PSL Interstate! There was a lot of 62 to 65 mph traveling big rigs so that in and of itself was a huge plus. I hope to do a drive to the NYIAS and experience the open roads activity all over again next week. With Diesel punching up through $3.00 per again, I suspect we will begin to see a lot more of these guys DWL and staying between the limits rather than testing out the 5 to 6 over like a large percentage used to do.

___On a similar note, Jessie called me earlier today and said he was speaking to an OTR rig mechanic who said it did not matter if a Big Rig traveled at 65 or 70, they will receive the same FE??? And Jessie was in his Big Rig at the time :rolleyes:

___If guys are still talking non-sense in the service stations, the guys driving the rigs are being pulled to the dark side by BS :(

___Good Luck

___Wayne

Last week when I was driving down the interstate I saw a Sara Lee Foods semi-trailer that had huge air guides(?) running the length of the trailer portion with some sort of message about "doing there part to be green" or something to that effect.

I couldn't get a picture of it safely and found no mention of it on the Sara Lee foods website.

Wonder how much of an improvement it made?

did they look like this?

http://www.freightwing.com/

Yea, sort of like that. But this set was a very strong contour, almost a modern Formula 1 kinda of aero look to it - but the same concept.

Looks like the freightwing claims a 6-7% fe gain - certainly worth the investment for trucks!