On October 24th, I took my first run out with the new Cascadia Evolution. My GVW was just shy of 79,000 pounds. I traveled over Black Mountain, NC through Asheville and crossed the Appalachian Mountains. I met the rolling hills of Tennessee and Kentucky. While In the state of Kentucky, I participated in a Freightliner dealership open house prior to heading to my final destination in Trenton, Missouri.
During the trip, I experienced high cross winds from the combination of the cold front arriving as well as effects from Hurricane “Sandy”. I unloaded/reloaded in Trenton, MO to head back to North Carolina. I was greeted by more high winds and moisture from the hurricane which combined with the cold front contributing to blinding snow into the mountains of North Carolina.
When I made my stop to refuel for the first time, the results for my fuel mileage were 7.746 mpg. Not quite the super high number of course however the truck isn’t broke in, the load was heavy and the weather conditions were far from ideal.
My early impressions of the newly updated DD15 engine include: for one, I didn’t notice any loss of power from the deletion of the compound turbo nor the change to the proprietary asymmetric turbo charger. The engine responded in its normal and quick light footed manner.
The mountain driving and rolling hills gave me the opportunity to give the DT12 automated manual transmission a real workout. All the features from the E-COAST to the skip shifting made this a very enjoyable drive. The one feature that I’m most impressed with is the shift schedule in the lower gears. The DD15 engine has the ability to pick up RPM’s in rapid fashion therefore the skip shifting abilities of the new transmission allowed it to harness all the power and efficiency of the DD15 engine. In the past, while in the lower gears, I always had to be very careful applying the throttle or the engine would hit red line in every gear. The new transmission senses the weight, load, demand and upon acceleration will skip to the most appropriate gear. I also took note to the more powerful integrated Jacobs engine brakes. With the additional power, I found myself seldom ever having the need to use the highest setting and in fact in most cases found the lowest setting was all I needed.
When I arrived back in North Carolina, I reloaded and took a shipment to Laredo, TX. This load weighed 28,000 lbs. I topped off the tank in Meridian, Mississippi and the mpg result was 8.80. I continued on to Laredo, TX and picked up a load going to Charlotte, NC. I stopped at Meridian, TX to refuel on my way back and the mpg result was 9.209. I’m happy to see the direction of increased fuel mileage.
I will go into more detail in the future regarding each of these new features on the Cascadia Evolution. Stay tuned…