This week, I took a run from North Carolina to Detroit, Michigan. What makes this trip worthy of a story are the incredible fuel mileage results in less than stellar operating conditions.
The tale of the story begins in Meridian, Mississippi which happens to be the location where I fueled the truck. My loaded weight was 73,000 lbs. and I was in the midst of the Thanksgiving traffic congestion. The next stop was the delivery point of Charlotte, NC. After dropping off the shipment, I headed to High Point, NC to have some minor repairs done on my trailer. Next, I traveled home for the Thanksgiving holiday. While at home, on Thanksgiving eve, I received a phone call informing me the trailer repairs were completed. I then went back to High Point to retrieve the trailer. This turned out to be a mistake as traffic was horrendous and the normal 65 mile trip took over 2 hours to complete. On the following Monday, I picked up a load in Mt. Holly, NC with a loaded weight of 72,000 lbs. with a final destination of Brighton, Michigan. The route for this trip was as follows: Route I- 77 north, US 33, I-270, US 23, I-75 and I-96. The foothills of North Carolina, fancy gap and the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia are never a walk in the park. I stopped at North Baltimore, Ohio to refuel. The final fuel mileage results were as follows: 7.7 mpg for the trip from Mt. Holly to North Baltimore. 8.7 mpg since the last fuel up in Meridian, Mississippi and 8.7 mpg as calculated from figures off the fuel pump.
These results are amazing. As you can imagine, I’m quite pleased with how the new Cascadia Evolution has been performing so far. It’s not that distant of a memory when trucks could only attain 6 mpg on a trip such as described above.