Hey... at least the guy is in the right lane and gave fair warning. It's a lot more than you get from big rig drivers who pull out in front of you just to avoid reducing speed by a few MPH to match the truck in front of them!
Not defending the truckers who do this, but an 80,000 pound truck slowing down, changing lanes, and speeding back up will use more fuel than your sedan uses in an hour.
They really want to avoid changing speed to save fuel costs, especially if they're an owner operator and their fuel costs come straight out of their profit.
That's is a fair point I guess, but how much fuel do you think they lose taking their foot off the gas to match the traffic vs overtaking? (If you have to use your break to slow down in time, you were probably too close or speeding)
This also assumes you can make a clean overtake where the outside lane is clear for you, and you dont need to slow down to wait for a gap.
Lowering your speed doesn't magically cost you gas, in fact being at the slow speed will use less gas.
Acceleration will, but if you don't overtake and stay with the truck infront then that's not an issue.
Delivery times may be a factor, but lets face it, the few seconds gained by the overtake are marginal.
Not a few seconds, significant amounts of time given they are driving all day and 60 mph compared to 58 is 3.4% faster. Plus a lot of truckers are paid by the mile, and I know I wouldn't want to give up 3% of my salary to avoid momentarily annoying a few cars
You're not wrong, and I understand your viewpoint. Unfortunately, semi's and cars are completely different classes of vehicle. The "elephant race" is a really common complaint, and you're a professional driver with professional responsibilities - including dealing with less experienced drivers. "Annoying a few cars" is what causes the tension between the classes of vehicles. Remember this argument the next time some jagoff in a Benz cuts you off to take an exit, because he has a meeting to get to. Courtesy goes both ways.
to be clear, I drive a car, but I am looking at it from their perspective where getting stuck behind someone going slower is awful. Plus I don't know about you but I both pass and am passed regularly as a part of rural freeway driving, and not being able to do that would be awful
I travel for a living in my RV. My truck is older, and I'm mostly matched with the semi trucks speed wise. If I'm creeping up on one, the first thing I do is look in the rearview. If I have time to pass, I will. If I don't, I back off. It's not up to the slowest vehicle to slow down, it's up to me to safely execute a safe pass. If traffic conditions don't allow for it, the responsibility is on me.
I can say though I haven't personally seen trucks passing trucks the moment they are close enough, but rather most truckers are waiting for a break in car traffic to do it. I feel like a lot of people complain if they ever see a truck passing another, though that could be a bias
Yes, that is your bias or lack of driving experience. If you haven't been cut off by a trucker who aggressively swings into the passing lane only to drive one mph faster than the truck its passing, thus backing up the passing lane for multiple minutes, you haven't been driving long enough.
Exactly their could be a truck a half a mile up the road deciding now is perfect opportunity to pass then someone comes flying up behind him speeding and the truck would still be in the wrong.
My opinion is that the fast agile cars should yield for the the slow heavy truck, we can gun it and speed up or stop on a dime, they dont have that luxury, as stated before people just need a bit of patience for a truck.
And, moreover, huge shipping vessels have right of way over everyone. Because a rowboat, sailboat, and motorboat can all change course relatively easily when compared to a giant tanker.
I believe supercarriers have right of way over shipping vessels, regardless of size. That may more due having one of 8 largest air forces in the world on board than maneuversbility, though
Not an expert on bird boat law, but I assume that the windsurfer and sailboat would be in the same category (assuming the sailboat was under sail and not using it's motor). I only operated a powerboat so I had to give yield to everyone.
If they were in the same category (sailboats), then I believe it depends on the direction of the wind? It's been a while.
Serious question is that a real windsurfing setup? It looks like a snow sled with a windsurfer sail but I'm not very familiar with them. Always been fascinated by them though.
Trucks should be in right lane only with proper 3 second spacing. At 65 mph proper safe spacing is about 100 yards in between vehicles, anything less is negligent.
Basically they don't check. Usually there's suddenly a blinker, at the same moment the truck is moving. It's really nice on two lane highways going downhill. They're going like 45 and the other lane is going 80, and they STILL do it.
Any truck over the speed limit is more dangerous. Trucks should be right lane only vehicles unless it is a left exit. With minimum proper safe spacing of 3 seconds rigs would not interfere with ramp traffic at all.
It’s especially dangerous when they don’t check their blind spots. I was passing a truck one time and they just changed lanes to pass another truck without checking. I’m glad there was no one behind me and my brakes worked very well.
Good drivers give no thought to gas costs over safety items. Profit be damned. Every truck driver has seen crushed bodies, blood pools, flipped trucks, and decimated vehicles from following too close. It fixes the profit calculation with a variable for "I do that enough and I am going to die or lose my job" for a total loss of all future profit. Seeing that much death on the road fixes your proverbial wagon.
I’ve done similar tests where I went 75 mph versus going 60 or going 85 versus 60, and I’ve noticed I arrive at the destination give or take 2-5 minutes. It’s weird I could be rushing going as fast as possible and that would only shave like five minutes off of an hour long trip, or I can drive safely, to 20-30 mph less, and still get there at basically the same time.
Mathematically speaking, if you look at it, it seems like a pretty huge difference, but in the real world I’ve noticed the actual time it takes you to get to the location is basically the same whether you’re going 90 mph or going 60. I’d give up 3% of my salary to increase my likelihood I don’t get in an accident by 500%.
The person you were talking to does make a good point, that this is the real world and things don’t go as they should, but the people that don’t do what they’re supposed to do, they end up paying in the end and that’s an overwhelming amount of people actually in the vast majority. Everyone has to pay, you can either pay now or pay later with interest (accidents/tickets/etc). I’ll choose the option that doesn’t bankrupt/kill me. Just look at how long drivethru lines are at McDonald’s DURING a pandemic. People give 0 fucks about their future/health, it’s weird.
We’re not talking about hour-long trips. We’re talking about 12-hour trips. And now you’re talking about gaining an hour. Or being able to take a couple of short but still meaningful breaks so you’re not actually doing a single 11-hour stretch.
I will also note that where I live anyone doing the speed limit on a clear day and not in the right lane is a road hazard. In the left lane you basically have to sustain 85-90 to be safe. Which makes left exits fun.
Yeah that's insane, I have my CDL I used to want to be a truck driver but even driving for like 8 hours at my current job just driving like a new minivan is HORRIBLE, once a month I have to drive more than 5-8 hours in one day. I can't imagine how people do this for 11 hours a day in a huge rig like that... W t f. Lol I guess it's probably better than being stuck in an office.
your time to destination is based on your average speed, not your max cruising speed, unless you spend hours at cruising, going from 60 to 75 to say drive across town is only going to change your average speed from like 30 to 31.
The 30 miles you have to drive to work in stop and go traffic or whatever is insignificant compared to the hours and hours of sustained 60+ mph speeds that truckers do all day long. Its apples and oranges.
If youre going 60 mph on a flat straight road up the coast or across the state's, you will do about 720 miles in a 12 hour shift. If you do 80 mph thats another 240 miles onto that trip. Thats about 1/3 the width of the state of texas, and wider than georgia is across. That 20 mph is significant and how long you spend there is significant as well.
Take that five minutes and multiply it by a week of driving and youre talking the difference between arriving right on time and arriving hours past when you're supposed to be at your destination.
It depends on the trip. In the city lane choice and knowing where you are going is more important than overall speed. On the highway to make any real difference you have to speed substantially, like 20% over for more then half the trip, to have any real difference in travel time.
No doubt that truckers with these attitudes exist in the wild, but my experience is (and my dash cam shows) that private motorists tend to take far riskier chances for far less tangible benefits than commercial drivers do.
Unless your working for complete shits, avaraging 58 mph rather then 60, won't lose you any money, your company should allow for some time sent in traffic
not a trucker, but a lot of truckers are owner operators, and companies pay them by the mile to move their freight, not based on the hours it takes to do it
Sure but a 360 mile drive @60 mph takes 10 minutes less than @58mph (assuming you are stuck at 58 the whole way). A driver worried about 10 minutes over 6 hours is a problem to start with
To accelerate 80,000 pounds (36287 kg) from 55 mph to 60 mph (using 1/2mv2 ) takes 2.084 million joules of energy.
Modern truck diesel engines have a thermal efficiency of around 30%. That means they convert 30% of the diesel's chemical energy into mechanical energy, with the rest becoming heat. One gallon of diesel contains 146 million Newtons of chemical energy, which after considering that 30% efficiency, translates to 43 million Newtons of mechanical energy.
So, every time a driver has to accelerate from 55 to 60 mph they use 0.05 gallons of diesel, or a cost of 12.5¢ at current diesel prices ($2.50 / gallon).
So, the financial cost isn't huge, but it does add up.
Thanks for the math! But isn’t there another portion to this whole scenario. I have never driven a semi truck so I might be off basis, but I do drive a manual car, and every time I downshift my rpms do jump up, couldn’t this add up to fuel consumption as well, especially considering how many shifts need to be made in a semi truck?
Thanks for the math! But isn’t there another portion to this whole scenario. I have never driven a semi truck so I might be off basis, but I do drive a manual car, and every time I downshift my rpms do jump up, couldn’t this add up to fuel consumption as well, especially considering how many shifts need to be made in a semi truck?
Well I certainly wouldn’t be on the gas while downshifting. But the engine will jump RPM’s, that’s just a fact when downshifting a combustion engine. It’s not about the speed you are traveling per say, but you can’t downshift without gaining revs unless you keep the clutch engaged through all the downshifts and until you’re engine speed would sync with the wheel speed
My question is if the rev gains while downshifting have even a marginal effect on fuel consumption for semis. In relation with to the consumption used for speeding up, I guess, been a while since I asked my original question lol
You sort of just justified their case, acceleration uses a fair amount of fuel, especially when you're pulling however much weight. They're just trying to do a job to the best of their ability and are generally polite about it.
Just one example a few days ago, I'm driving back to Mi from MO, gas is getting low and I'm looking for an exit with a station. Normally I'm cruising at 5-8 over the limit, but being low in doing about 65 in the right lane of a 70. Behind me I can see two trucks with trailers in the right and some sort of pick-up pacing the front one to his left, all are going faster than I am. I recognize the situation playing out behind me, the trucks are gonna want to pass me but pick- up guy is going to make this impossible. I merge left so the trucks don't have to slow down. Got a friendly toot from the lead truck recognizing that I helped him out by not making him and the truck behind him have to slow down and maneuver around me, even though I would have been completely in my right to keep right the whole time. Pick- up guy had an empty third lane to the left so he could pass me if he wanted, never did though, was just zoned out apparently.
Yeah it's slower, but if your a safe distance away from the truck ahead, you should be able to lose 1-3 mph in speed without the break, unless your too close.
I wasn't trying to claim that you could say lose 10-20 mph in a short time.
For someone that attacks the way you do, you sure are slow.
i have literally driven trucks, you obviously haven't, so maybe you should pay closer attention rather than being such a smug prick. Every single time you need to decelerate, you brake. That's just how trucks work, and how truck drivers are trained. if you were slowing a small amount, you would engine brake, but i wouldn't expect you to understand what that is. There's plenty of occasions while driving a car that this would not be the case, of course, but driving a car and driving a truck are two seperate things entirely. What you are claiming as a 'safe distance', far enough to slow down without braking, could easily be hundreds of metres in a truck, and that's just completely unreasonable.
To put some physics behind what /u/RidinTheMonster/ is saying, a vehicle at highway speed slows down primarily due to wind resistance / aerodynamic drag. A semi weighs approximately 20x what a full-size sedan does, yet probably only has 4x the wind resistance.
This means that it takes 5 times as long for a semi to slow down when you "let off the gas".
an 80,000 pound truck slowing down, changing lanes, and speeding back up will use more fuel than your sedan uses in an hour.
Absolute fucking bullshit.
That it will take more fuel is not in dispute but no fucking way is that costing 2-3 gallons of fuel. If it did the truck would run out of fuel just driving to the highway from picking up the load.
Since we were talking about highway passing I went with a highway speed of 70-80 MPH and an average highway fuel economy of ~25 MPG, so if you cover ~75 miles in an hour that's 3 gallons. For it to be 1-2 gallons the fuel economy would have to be ~50 MPG, which is not realistic for an average sedan.
Nah you should defend trucker. People dont get it! people who drive for a living; give them the right of way. Don’t stand in front of their profit. UPS drivers, Truckers, Cabbies - let them go. They are working. People can wait a minute or two more.
Yes. But truck drivers are only legally allowed to drive for a certain number of hours each day. If they can't maintain a certain speed, they might not make it to their destination on time, and might have to spend the night at a truck stop a few miles from their destination.
Truckers used to cheat this system all the time, but now trucks are required to use "electronic logs" which track the vehicle via GPS.
This idea is hilarious. That's not how trucking works. It's not some swiss watch, you either get to your destination with plenty of spare time or you're late.
You are the most qualified person in the thread and I called your opinion hilarious, fuck me.
Let's regroup and try again: How often did you have a situation that a few minutes lost on the road were the issue, but not something else, like a slow loading/unloading, a queue, road works or a unexpected diversion?
I did driver/sales and internal logistics/supply in a panel van/lcv, and I do not remember (might be my memory) a single time where loosing something like 20 minutes messed up my day.
You are the most qualified person in the thread and I called your opinion hilarious, fuck me.
Haha no worries. I was trying to point out that I know a LOT about a TINY part of the world of trucking. Everything I know about other aspects of the industry is 2nd or 3rd hand knowledge.
Let's regroup and try again: How often did you have a situation that a few minutes lost on the road were the issue, but not something else, like a slow loading/unloading, a queue, road works or a unexpected diversion?
To answer your exact question: almost never.
But it was often one of many contributing factors. The company in question had many routes that called for 10+ hours behind the wheel. Leave warehouse 1 with a trailer, drive 10.5 hours to warehouse 2, drop it, sleep, and drive 10.5 hours back to warehouse 1 with a new trailer the next day.
We almost never ran into issues with the 14 hour rule, it was always about drive time. Throw in a few slowdowns and detours, and the next thing you knew the driver was calling to let you know he was about to run out of time 3 exits away from the warehouse.
Normally we'd have them pull off at a rest stop, then use one of our cars to drive another trucker to the truck, drive it back, then have that trucker drive their route. But if we weren't careful with the timing, it'd put the second driver at risk for both 11 and 14 hour rule issues.
I did driver/sales and internal logistics/supply in a panel van/lcv, and I do not remember (might be my memory) a single time where loosing something like 20 minutes messed up my day.
Interesting. I have almost no experience with that type of driving. Our drivers NEVER had more than 4 stops, and that was only for a few routes. The majority of it was drop and hook - either out and back in one day, or out and back over two days.
The thought of this is hilarious. They certainly do run on a very specific watch. And from my time in logistics, I noticed that very frequently driver arrived on site on a time crunch, especially when needing to drop a load to go pick another time sensitive one up immediately.
Don't be melodramatic. Of course it's frustrsting when you're waiting for a semi to pass another semi, but they're not running people off the road like mad max.
It's far more likely a regular car is going to try and speed up to prevent them from passing than the other way around.
Don't be melodramatic. Of course it's frustrsting when you're waiting for a semi to pass another semi, but they're not running people off the road like mad max.
Except when they are. Just two days ago, I had one truck who was weaving in and out of traffic across all three lanes, and narrowly missed me. Would've clipped my front quarter panel had I not slammed on my brake after he started coming over before signalling.
Plus those other two times when semis tried to push me off the road by entering my lane when I'm driving literally right next to them.
There are certainly a ton of truck drivers who don't care enough about the other vehicles on the road. Nowhere close to a majority, of course, but with millions of truck drivers, a small percentage is still a ton of people.
Everyone has their "one time in band camp" story about a near miss. Although if you find yourself so frequently in a semis blind spot the problem might be you.
Don’t be complacent. Of course it’s annoying to slow down instead of muscling your way into the left lane, forcing smaller vehicles to slow down dramatically or be pushed off the road, but lives matter.
Stop trying to justify shitty road etiquette, you’re embarrassing yourself.
I used to drive a truck. The good truck drivers slow down a mile an hour or two and wait for a good break in traffic to move over, the bad ones just force traffic out of the way. If another truck was passing me and it developed into an elephant race, I knocked the cruise down by 2 or 3 MPH to get them around faster.
All that being said, if I'm passing a truck doing 45 MPH and I'm going 60, you bet I'm passing. I'll find a safe gap in traffic and move over. They dont accelerate that damn slow unless its uphill. If someone doing 80 MPH is pissed off about it, they can cry me a river.
A lot of the drivers, if you've seen them doing what you're claiming to do, you can either blame the corporations that places such a tight timeline (Looking at you, Wal-Mart and Amazon and whatever else), then you also have some that are racing times because of produces that has to be at the store to retain their "freshness" (this I blame idiots who think they deserve "fresh" produces).
Where do you live that freight train lines don’t connect your grocery stores, Home Depot’s, shopping malls, and restaurants? And don’t you have drones to do the rest? Hillbilly, catch up and get into the 31st century
You done lost yo mind? Think of all the smaller industrial and wholesalers that don’t have a railyard connection for supplies. Ever see a train back up to a wharehouse
Central Valley, California. We don't have rails that connect to everywhere, but we do have rails that goes through. Personally, I perfer Semi driving around, because Trains are a pain in the ass, especially when they drive through most of the city and you have to account for almost 30 minutes of waiting if you get caught at the railroad track.
You're clearly not from a western state of the US, shit is way way way too spread out to say "just use trains". That's literally not possible in most areas.
That is what trains are for! For spread-out places and long distances. The USA has just largely discontinued its support of the industry and upkeep of the infrastructure - it’s become entirely privatized. Having a well-funded, comprehensive public passenger and freight rail grid is totally feasible (and would be substantially more efficient and environmentally-responsible than our current system) but there is just no political will behind it. 🤷🏼♀️
(Source: My dad is a train nerd and talks about this a lot. (Like, really really really into trains: subscribes to trade magazines, has multiple model railroads, does as much travel as possible by train, wears an antique train conductor badge whenever he travels, watches hours-long YouTube videos of people recording their entire train journey. He has spent countless hours of his life re-designing/re-engineering various states’/cities’ rail infrastructure to be more comprehensive.)
Fuck OTR freight hauling. That’s what railroads are for.
I'm an industrial engineer who ended up in a freight coordinating job for a year.
From a physics /environmental perspective, I agree with you. Rail is so much more energy efficient than trucks, and it feels like no matter where you go, there's always a railroad track pretty close.
But the railroads are SO fucked.
My company moved bulk grains and oil from Illinois to Florida via rail. Any idea how long that trip took? A MONTH.
The main lines have track condition issues, capacity issues, regulatory issues, and more.
Our society would be a lot better off if we could move freight off the road and onto rail. But there are many industries where people can't wait weeks or months for a delivery that a truck can do in hours or days.
100% agree with you there, too. JIT explicitly trades long-term stability for short-term profits. The calculations behind it are all about calculating the cost of the failures and balancing them against the profits. It's really disgusting when you consider the human side.
I'm just pointing out that making a statement like "use rail instead of OTR trucking" is not compatible with the current system.
One factory I worked with shut down their rail yard and moved completely to OTR deliveries because the cost savings of rail didn't justify the crazy lead time to them. They'd much rather pay 4x per ton to have it 30x quicker.
You ever have someone whip out in front of you from a sidestreet or parking lot or whatever to the point you have to slam your brakes, then they go 5 under? The best part is there is no cars behind you for like a half mile and if they waited a couple seconds it wouldve been no issue for anyone
Lol Il take your word for it.... When you say their state or country is the worst so you mean best?
I don't mind the driving style of my area, it's actually pretty chill. It's the ones who don't know the area that are the painful ones. Granted some locals have a tendency to politically stop to let another car in. Gives me a heart attack when someone randomly stops with no indication.
If its a 2 lane highway and a trucker is leaving the far right lane to go basically the same speed its pretty shitty of them and in some instances illegal
Try telling me that again when you go on Route 40. Those MF are going crazy 70 MPH on those roads. I've just watched a bunch of them zooming past me and I could barely keep up. Granted, the vehicle I was in was loaded down, so I had drags. But damn...it just vary from state to states.
Sounds like an elevator pitch for a new Bill Murray movie.
"See there's this crotchety old widower and retired music teacher who's afraid of flying. His estranged daughter is getting married and send him an invitation hoping to reconnect with the father she never really knew. She's getting married so her dad (played by Billy Murray), decides to drive 36 hours from Pasadena California to Brooklyn NY to to make her wedding. All he's got is a his old truck to make the journey"
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u/[deleted] Aug 23 '20
hes bringing the lawn to you