It's a Team's Life

DDEC Engine Report for October

By Linda Caffee
Posted Nov 6th 2011 6:03AM

2012 Cascadia - DD13 - HP 370 Rear End Ratio 3.21

We have found that the ECM report reads better than what we calculate using the odometer. During the month of October my figures show a mile per gallon average of 11.71 while the DDEC shows 12.25. This can be attributed to a few things I can think of with one being the fuel pumps themselves and that we had not fueled on the day the report was ran.

Each month since the day we started driving this truck the fuel mileage has climbed which tells us the engine is breaking in nicely. We have noticed that as the motor is breaking in our regens are happening more often. This month we had three regens in a 10,000-mile range.

We are still getting high mileages on our DEF usage at 552 miles per gallon. This is keeping our DEF costs down to about .004 per mile. The DEF costs are not much of a factor in our costs associated with this truck.

We keep the speedometer right around 60 mph unless in California and we bring our speed back down to 58 mph. I was also pleased to see our idle time at below 1%, as we are conscious of when the truck stops the ignition is turned to off. We though cannot control idling when stuck in traffic, which happens more than we would like.

I created a simple chart showing what fuel costs are for a year to emphasize what getting 12-mpg can do for our bottom line:

8 mpg 140,000 miles per year at $3.00 a gallon for fuel = $52,500

9 mpg 140,000 miles per year at $3.00 a gallon for fuel = $46,665

10 mpg 140,000 miles per year at $3.00 a gallon for fuel = $42,000

11 mpg 140,000 miles per year at $3.00 a gallon for fuel = $38,181

12 mpg 140,000 miles per year at $3.00 a gallon for fuel = $34,998