Fuel cost help

Hi all.
New user and first time owner of prime mover. I recently bought Mercedes actros 2646 to do Melbourne to Sydney. Just after my first 2 runs I had to put the job on hold as the fuel consumption blew me away. Can someone tell me how much fuel consumption is acceptable in following route

Truck: 2008 Mercedes benz 2646 (460 horsepower) euro 3
Trailer: 3 axle tautliner on airbags
Trip: Melbourne (dandenog) to Sydney (930km)
Driving: almost all but 50km on freeway
Load: 22.5 tonne (to Sydney)
Return load: (empty)

I have parked the truck up after just 2 drops as there is nothing left for me and it is cheaper to make payments then to drive the bloody thing.

I'd be looking for a return load for a start ....

Don't know about the mercedes but read a article in major paper of queensland transport company told all their drivers to drive at 90 k max which was checked by on board gps ,couple of drives refused and kept at 100+ and were let go ,reduced fuel bill by $7000 per week and kept company afloat .
Peter

thanks guys, my bill for last return trip was $1300 at $1.54 liter and to top things off it ran out of fuel on top of bolty bridge on friday at 5pm :-X

i think $1300 is way too much considering return is empty. is there something wrong with my truck? i went to mercedes they won't acknowledge it is thirsty.

Not a good place to run out of fuel!

Couldn't tell you what to expect out of that truck. But agree reducing top speed could decrease fuel consumption as wind drag is a big problem. (have a look at www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc...vm=bv.50165853,d.aGc ) And being payed to go both ways would help also!

But just to help out might crunch the numbers for you.

$1300 of fuel at 1.54 liter comes out at around 844 Liters of fuel.

You indicate you did 930km from Dandenong to Sydney. So assume your fuel was for the return trip so total distance was 1860 km's.

So your fuel consumption was 2.2 km/liter or 45 L/100km (from my workings out anyway!).

I don't know what your type of truck should get. But I thought the figures might help.

thanks j blair: for the first run i calculated getting something like 1.6km a liter. At 45lites per 100km is far outcry from mercedes fuel efficiency world record of 2008 model similar truck which uses 19.44 liters er 100km

green.autoblog.com/2008/06/03/mercedes-b...ciency-world-record/

My guys driving doubles are getting 1.7 to 1.9 km to the liter on SYD MEL runs

Snaws

Sonu,

Their is a lot of difference between driving for efficiency and normal driving. You will notice that to get that efficiency record they only drove at 50mph and was on a test track (probably flat!).

As mentioned previously driving at 90km/hr would conserve quite a bit of fuel.

Have a read of this document cumminsengines.com/uploads/docs/cummins_...ter_fuel_economy.pdf it has some interesting stuff about speed/HP and drag issues.

One interesting statement in the document is:-

Rock-Solid Rules
[ch61607] Every 2% reduction in aerodynamic drag results in approximately 1% improvement
in fuel economy.
[ch61607] Above 55 mph, each 1 mph increase in vehicle speed decreases fuel economy by
0.1 mpg.
[ch61607] Worn tires provide better fuel economy than new tires, up to 7% better fuel economy.
[ch61607] Used lug drive tires can get up to 0.4 mpg better than new lug tires.
[ch61607] Ribbed tires on the drive axles provide 2

Just a comparison, my Landcruiser with caravan attached, total weight of approx. 5 tonne, on a good day, 17 litres per 100km, windy day, anything up to 21 litres, which is about the average of most others of similar size vans.

My old C160 Inter returned approx. 10 mpg on Haulin the Hume with the trailer attached.
Gotta feed them ponies if you want them to work,

Gilly

Your diff ratio is also very important. With that hp you should be idling along well below 2000 rpm, depending where the sweet spot for your motor is. If your truck has been spec'd for heavy work it may have a slow speed diff and that will really chew the juice on highway work.