Thanksgiving has always been a busy time for me in trucking. When I had my flatbed operation, we used to deliver Christmas trees and the rush began two weeks prior to the Thanksgiving holiday. You were lucky to make it home, enjoy a quick turkey meal and head back out to pick up/deliver more trees. I haven’t transported trees for many years now and therefore have enjoyed being home over the Thanksgiving holiday.
This year, I took my regular shipment to Laredo, TX. I leave on Monday and unload on Wednesday. With Thanksgiving being on Thursday, it wasn’t looking very good for my being home on Thanksgiving Day. However, I spoke with the shipper/receiver the prior week and he told me there was a slim chance that my shipment would be ready to pick up on Tuesday evening. Therefore, I took a leap of faith and left out early on Sunday evening. I received a phone call on Tuesday afternoon and was told my load was ready and to come in and load/unload when available. This was great news! I looked at my GPS and it showed that I had an hour and forty five minute window of opportunity to make it home for the holiday. After my shipment was loaded, I knew that I needed to make it to San Antonio, TX for the first leg. My GPS showed that I had a ten minute deficit in hours vs. hours that I had available for that days log book.
I realized that in order to make it home to North Carolina, I would need to increase my speed. However, my GPS doesn’t ever figure on me running 70 to 75 mph. My GPS is set up to figure a maximum average speed of 60 mph. The speed limit in Texas for a large portion of my route is 75 mph and therefore, I decided to run at 75 mph wherever possible to make up some time. Since, I always run at 62 mph maximum speed, I justified in my mind that this could be an experiment for those who ask me on occasion “what would your fuel mileage be if you ran at 75 mph? However, the real reason for stepping up my speed was to make it home on Thanksgiving Day.
There was a cost to stepping up my speed from 62 mph to 75 mph. In the first 885 miles from Laredo, TX to Meridian, Miss. with four major traffic jams, the average mile per gallon as figured at the pump was 8.2 mpg. The next 560 mile leg was from Meridian, Miss to Troutman, NC which included good traffic conditions and a maximum cruise speed of 70 mph and yielded a 9.1 mpg result. I made it home at 7:45 pm on Thanksgiving Day with a 45 minute surplus of hours to accomplish my mission. So… what was the cost?
The round trip length was 2,873 miles. Let’s divide this by 2 as I only ran the higher speeds for half of the trip. So now… let’s talk about the 1,437 miles from Laredo, TX to Troutman, NC. The first leg came in at 8.2 with horrible traffic conditions. The second half of the trip came in at 9.1 mpg with favorable conditions. Let’s split the difference with the average mpg being approximately 8.65 mpg. This figures out to 166.127 gallons. Now let’s split the difference between my lifetime fuel mileage of 9.6 mpg and my previous 30 days of 10.5 and we’ll settle on a figure of 10 mpg. The same trip at 10 mpg would have required 143.70 gallons of fuel. My fuel price with the NASTC discount has been averaging 3.559. The figure of 22.427 gallons of fuel was required to run the extra high rate of speed at 70 to 75 mph when applicable. The extra cost for me to make it home on Thanksgiving Day was $79.82.
This is hardly a scientific test on my fuel results however it gives us a peek into where the results may fall when driving at the higher speeds. I was pleased to still come in at 8.2 (first half) and 9.1 (second half) of the trip.
This concludes testing for now as I won’t be running at these speeds on a normal basis. Hope everyone had a safe and happy Thanksgiving weekend.
Home and ready to go feast on Thanksgiving dinner with my family.
