Over the last week or so, my shipment weights have been very light and therefore, I don’t have much to share with you in regards to fuel economy on the new Cascadia. I did have an interesting week prior to last in that the week was full of demo rides and open houses for Truck Country dealers in Wisconsin.
The week began in Wilmington, IL at the Petro. I made a delivery in Wooddale, IL and proceeded with an empty trailer onto Wausau, WI. The trip for this leg was a total of 316 miles. At the Wausau Freightliner Dealership open house event, we loaded approximately 15,000 lbs. of brake drums and shoes in order to add weight to the trailer for demonstrations. I would have preferred to have more weight, however we could only use what was available. During the event, I performed several demonstration rides which totaled 57 miles with each being 7-10 miles a piece. After the event, we unloaded the weight and concluded our day by traveling to Kaukauna, WI to prepare for the next day’s open house. In the morning, we managed to find approx. 20,000 lbs. of cargo for those days’ demonstrations. At this event, I did 72 miles of demo rides, each being 10 or less miles a piece. After this event, we again unloaded the weight and drove to the Madison, WI location. The total miles travelled for this day came in at 181 miles. In the morning, we managed to find 25,000 lbs. of cargo for added weight. I conducted several short demo rides totaling approx. 68 miles with each being less than 10 miles a piece. At the conclusion of the event, we unloaded the cargo and that evening, I put fuel in the truck.
The truck was full with fuel when I began this show tour in Wilmington, IL. When I refilled the truck, the fuel mileage came in at 10.327 mpg. I found it interesting that during the demonstration rides, the indicated mpg average by the dashboard readout was coming out between 7.3 and 7.7 mpg. These demo rides always include a lot of stop and start as I demonstrate the many features of the Detroit DT 12 automated manual transmission. This type of driving is hardly conclusive to obtaining good fuel mileage numbers. On the empty portions in between transporting the truck and trailer to each dealership, I was able to get 11.8-12.5 mpg. These miles were common driving miles between locations with an empty trailer.
This was hardly a good fuel mileage test in any shape, form or manner. However, I found it interesting that the mileage obtained during the demonstration portions of the week would have not long ago been considered to be excellent figures for overall fuel mileage.