It's a Team's Life

Our Truck Spec's

Our Truck Spec's

By Linda Caffee
Posted Aug 22nd 2015 7:11AM

Our truck has been on the road almost a year and there is not much we would change and has 113,826 miles on it.

We have two fuel tanks with only one 120-gallon tank feeding the engine and the separated 80-gallon tank feeding the generator. The concern with this is that we would have to fuel more often than we had in the past with our other trucks. That has not happened as our fuel mileage improved enough that we fuel just as we would have in the past.

The Bendix disc brakes have worked out and we will have these on our next truck. During brake check week we just smile when they ask us to pull around back.

Bolt Flirt Skirts have been on the truck for over two months and we are getting used to watching curbs, speed bumps, and also dips in the road. The skirts are still in the beta test stage and basically it is how low can you go test as well as durability. The skirts are on the outer boundaries of what makes sense and now the research is how to rein them in to make them practical and economical.

In the Bolt Custom Sleeper we are trying out a quartz counter top and a quartz table to see how this will hold up. So far with about 60,000 miles on the table all is still doing well and has held up to many rough roads. The weight was also a concern but in our operation we have never been loaded to our capacity. Personally I really like the feel of the quartz and also the easy cleanup. This is something I will want to keep in our next truck.

We also added orange seat belts instead of going with the black for visibility. The visibility is fantastic but keeping them clean is the hard part. Still have not solved this issue but will go with them again as there is never any doubt if we have our seatbelts on or off. Anyone have any ideas on keeping seatbelts clean I would sure appreciate any tips.

The DT12 Transmission was worth the wait. Over the years I have driven trucks from a Mack 6 speed transmission, Allison Automatic, Eaton Fuller Ultra Shift, to the DT12 and it is hard for me to imagine it getting any better then this DT12. After a year I am still smiling with the ease of shifting and watching as the DT12 skip shifts through the gears that are not needed. The DT12 never has a bad day shifting and I know we sure appreciate it.

Now for some fun statistics

Since adding the Bolt Flirt Skirts and the ATdynamics Trailer Tail our average fuel mileage has been 12.383

Best Fuel mileage since additions has been 14.282 for 971 miles.

Lifetime fuel mileage into August 2015 for 110248 miles is 11.97 and I see this still climbing through out the rest of summer into the colder months.