Your WORST fuel mileage ever.

[LOtero]

0 mpg

0 Mpg!!

 

[Udaloy]

I ended up with 9. 96 MPG running from Martinsville, VA to home. I was pulling a 40' fiver weighing in around 14,000 lbs. It's the aerodynamics of a billboard that kill ya. I was pushing it hard, up and down the smokies. I was never passed by a PoS or Durapuke.

 

[10.5 Dave]

8. 2 mpg pulling my extra tall 44 ft GN toy hauler. Ran 75-85 mph at 23,000 gross. The Cummins hauled the freight.

 

[viper700]

On this fuel consumption issue with big trailers behind has any body used an "Air Dam". If so did it make any difference or is the idea of a dam not worth the money?????????

 

[OTRPU]

I can make it get 6 when playing with the big trucks going through the hills in Utah. I swear I can actually see the guage moving. Put a load on it and stomp on it going up hills will burn some fuel.



Cheers,

Steve J

 

[Mike Ellis]

I normally average 14-15 mpg when hauling my camper, or pulling our big ol' Sundowner horse trailer. However, a few weeks ago we went to Navasota and hauled my new draft horse back home, it was a bit over 200 miles each way. On the way down, my calculations show that I got about 14 mpg, but on the way back it was 9. 8 :{ . The horse weighs about 2,000 pounds but shouldn't make that big of a difference. We had a stiff headwind, but nothing outrageous. I had filled up in Navasota, and I noticed that the truck seemed to have less power than normal, no signs of clutch slippage or anything obvious though. I filled back up in Ft. Worth and once again was back to the usual 20 mpg range.



If your truck has pretty consistent mileage unloaded, it is easy to figure out your mileage when driving loaded even for a partial tank. Just keep track of how many miles you drove loaded versus unloaded, you can use your average to figure out how many gallons were used driving unloaded and use the remainder to calculate the loaded MPG.



My truck has been very consistent in unloaded mpg, it has a standard deviation of only 0. 8 mpg in a couple of hundred fillups. Here's a chart from Excel showing the mpg for unloaded fill-ups dating back to 2001, about 115 tanks worth. "Unloaded" meaning no camper or horsetrailer, but often I am hauling stuff or pulling small trailer.

 

[JBlock]

13. 5 with open car hauler and Kobuta 25HP tractor, San Francisco to Portland, Oregon

 

[Udaloy]

On this fuel consumption issue with big trailers behind has any body used an "Air Dam". If so did it make any difference or is the idea of a dam not worth the money?????????

The use of a "chicken slide" is supposed to help a good bit, so long as the front of your camper is flat. Some campers have a nice sloped front that would negate a big impact.