In my past relationship, her father is a professional truck driver and he's advocated exactly what you said in prior conversations.

————–

S.P. Gass,
Speedy starts usually burn a lot more fuel than say, slow starts. However, when using a fuel additive (cleaner), it's often necessary to go Wide-Open Throttle to successfully discard the built up carbon in the engine.

Also, idling unnecessarily nets one zero miles per gallon. If you're going to be stopped more than two minutes (at the drive-thru, for example); turning off your car will save gas.

This practice is often debated due to the claim that turning on your car wastes 15x as much fuel compared to idling; however, this is based on carburated cars which indeed use 15x more fuel to start. If you have a car with fuel injection (“FI”), then you're fine.

Thanks for the comments. Keep it coming and share this with your buddies, too.

Also, re: your comments about idling, I think it’s also true that modern cars don’t need to warm up for quite as long as the classics.

In my past relationship, her father is a professional truck driver and he’s advocated exactly what you said in prior conversations.

————–

S.P. Gass,
Speedy starts usually burn a lot more fuel than say, slow starts. However, when using a fuel additive (cleaner), it’s often necessary to go Wide-Open Throttle to successfully discard the built up carbon in the engine.

Also, idling unnecessarily nets one zero miles per gallon. If you’re going to be stopped more than two minutes (at the drive-thru, for example); turning off your car will save gas.

This practice is often debated due to the claim that turning on your car wastes 15x as much fuel compared to idling; however, this is based on carburated cars which indeed use 15x more fuel to start. If you have a car with fuel injection (“FI”), then you’re fine.

Thanks for the comments. Keep it coming and share this with your buddies, too.

That’s why they draft. Trust me, they don’t like ‘regular’ people drafting- when a commuter dies from one of their ‘gators, they will undergo a lengthy and expensive investigation, and even if they don’t go to prison, they will lose their license and never drive a truck again. Companies won’t take a chance on a driver with something like that on their record, regardless if it’s their fault or not.

Driving a rig is only a couple steps below flying an airliner- I’ve done it. Try it for yourself, call a truck-driving school and schedule a ride-along, they’ll let you go along in the back for free, most times (an instructor will be in the passenger seat). You’ll see how vastly different it is from driving a normal vehicle. Driving a 40-ton truck with 12 gears and jake-brakes while 15 feet off the ground is worlds apart from anything you’ve ever driven. You’d advocate different safety precautions around a Miata than an Escalade that weighs twice as much, right? A rig weighs more than 20 Escalades.

I can’t stress this enough- an experienced trucker can pull off some amazing ballet given another experienced trucker and radio communication, even with two hundred thousand pounds of serious business between them going 75+ mph. Likewise, Jackie Chan has no problems doing dangerous stuff at blinding speed with other professionals; but if a cubicle drone wandered into the fight scene while filming, how do you think he would feel? Would it be a good idea for Scott from Marketing to stumble into Jackie Chan’s fight scene, with people’s safety, careers, and thousands or millions of dollars at stake?

Joe, you know me well enough that you can bet I’m not going to contradict your advice unless I have good reason- please don’t recommend that commuters or other car/SUV drivers draft big rigs!

I agree that drafting a big rig is extremely unsafe, and having 9ft radial belts flying through your windshield at 70MPH is not something I’d like to take my chances with.

I should clarify —

Drafting with a friend helps. What I do is tag-team driving, where when there is an opening I hold it open for my peer to catch up and vice-versa. Between Phoenix and Tucson, we went about 85MPH most of the way and by means of drafting, I only used 1/8 of a tank of gas instead of my usual quarter.

I get the impression when big rigs draft each other (where there is less than one meter between them!) — they probably don’t mind people drafting them. In most cases they don’t go fast enough for me to catch a decent draft so I just pass them.

~Joe

10 feet behind the trailer is not where you want to be when it loses a tire. Seriously, at freeway speeds a ‘gator will go through a windshield like it isn’t even there, Mythbusters or not.

Plus, drafting pisses off the driver, if he can see you. If he can’t see you, you’re hosed when he has to suddenly slow down or if anything else unexpected happens. Members of my family are long-haul truckers, and there is no end to the idiocy they see on the road. Be part of the solution instead of the problem and stay alive.

Don’t draft big rigs, and remember: if you can’t see the mirrors on the cab, he can’t see you. You also don’t know how tired he is or what condition his equipment is in.

Most of the time nothing goes wrong with 18-wheelers, but they weigh upwards of eighty thousand pounds; so when something does go wrong, it goes really wrong.