The view from that plateau must be impressive, Dave! As much as I admire the manner in which you quantified "the run" it is most telling, to me, in the following quote:
". .
Today on the way home, I decided to drive "normally"--or at least as normally as I could--habits are hard to break. I turned the A/C up, turned the radio on, and went just under the speed limit. It seemed very weird. I got 29.9 mpg on the overhead. "
The power of habits. Change the base (change the habits) and the results speak for themselves.
Whether the big truck at work (or towing the trailer) I think of driving as consisting of two modes:
Leaning forward: rapt attention to gain the most from every foot of roadway (not about travel speed per se, but about no wasted motions); and,
Leaning back: where one is relying on good habits, but not with the energy-sapping work of the other. The travel speed may be the same, etc, but the average
mph will not.
For DD, the average mpg may not be quite the same, but look at how high good habits --
now established -- have taken the bar from when the truck was first put into service.
Even more important (what to take away from it all) is that this is done over the normal course of life.
Not a stunt.
Whether I am posting on a Dodge forum or an RV forum on FE I always try to emphasize that the re-establishment of habits is the goal, not some numerical waypost. The
percentage change in the household petroleum bill (and the consequent increase in vehicle longevity) will pay for vehicle upgrades, or vacation trips, or what-have-you. Reduce the number of annual miles, and then drive the resulting miles
better.
Sixteen-year-olds have bad habits behind the wheel . . embarrassing when one wakes up at age 36 and has to fight those two-decade-long ingrained responses.
But look at what the results can be!!
The usual responses from those crowds (self-selected let's not forget) are that pickup trucks are not designed as FE specific vehicles --which puts the lie to their acquisition of same were this the case -- as FedEx and UPS do this as a matter of course in their driver requirements. Both cover a specific region (as does DD), both operate year-round (as does DD), both emphasize route planning, no idle; vehicle specs emphasize long-life but not at the expense of fuel (trade-offs examined), etc, etc, etc.
As part of vehicle longevity the electronic records of those vehicles are examined, and driver counseling used to
change habits.
Self-employed contractors and their pickups can adapt much the same, thus, so can any pickup owner (the DHS released a study last year that showed that, roughly, 90% of us go to 90% of the same places 90% of the time): cut the miles driven to achieve the same results (trip plan),
and then better drive the resultant miles (emphasize FE principles).
It seems a fairly rare thing, too, to see a truck from one of those companies involved in an accident. It may occur, but as a percentage of engine time-on and miles travelled it is low, comparatively. There are, thus, secondary and tertiary benefits accruing.
What I learn is that when I change one thing in driving
consistently that my attention naturally leads me to change another; to be complementary. It starts with a principle, and the logical extensions of that.
Things build.
Habits changed for the good.
Awesome, Dave!!
(And as to media, it would seem that the
CUMMINS Turbo Diesel Newsletter would be the natural. I see no conflict between the quantification here given, and the attention paid to million-mile pickups from those owner records. Yeah, yeah, I know,
the deletes and all, but that is where it
should be).
.
Today
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