MPG of a fully loaded Artic lorry?

[nick s]

Bit of a random Friday afternoon question. But I was behind an Artic last night and it got me thinking. Does anybody know what they average MPG wise if fully loaded to max capacity? they must cost a bomb to run! Huge engines and huge weight to lug around! It has to be single figures surely?

How much would one cost to run for an average 8 hour day driving round the country constantly on jobs?

[Sixpackpert]

4-5

[anothernameitist]

depends on what lorry, ie rigid or artic.

The above answers are not wrong

[littleredrooster]

On a certain fleet which have theirs restricted to 52 rather than 56, 6.2mpg is their overall fleet average. This saved £2.5m /pa in fuel costs, IIRC

[Benbay001]

7.5 tonners seem to do 10-12mpg from what i have read.

[CraigyMc]

doogz said:

Benbay001 said:

7.5 tonners seem to do 10-12mpg from what i have read.

Mine averaged more like 15-18.

It was horrendously slow though. 135bhp IIRC.

I rented one (a 7.5 tonner, dropside) last year. It managed 9mpg. To be fair though, it looked like it'd lived a really hard life.

C

[RobCrezz]

doogz said:

Benbay001 said:

7.5 tonners seem to do 10-12mpg from what i have read.

Mine averaged more like 15-18.

It was horrendously slow though. 135bhp IIRC.

Thats pretty good! My old Evo used to average about that!

[BMR]

littleredrooster said:

On a certain fleet which have theirs restricted to 52 rather than 56, 6.2mpg is their overall fleet average. This saved £2.5m /pa in fuel costs, IIRC

Do they calculate how much extra time it cost them? Not having a go at them for doing it, it would be genuinely interesting to see the figures on extra time needed, and wages as a result?

[Justin Cyder]

Hauliers are governed by the booking slot times that they need to be at their destination in the majority of deliveries & especially so in retail distribution. So the lost time by reducing from 56 to 52 apart from being fairly negligible over say 100 miles is more than accounted for by the people in the background routeing and planning those journeys... in theory.

Ex traffic clerks like me who deal with bookings & customers know this to be true. Drivers OTOH may have entirely differing views on what is & isn't achievable.


ETA: If you consider Tesco across all their Distribution centre sites take something like 50,000 inbound vehicle movements per week last time I looked, it becomes obvious that a free for all is a non starter. The system of booking delivery times is carefully managed & obviously needed to run the show. The arguments around being rejected for arriving five minutes late versus being kept on site for hours on end because someone has lost the paperwork or forgotten to charge up a forklift are another story. Time is money etc. etc.

Edited by Justin Cyder on Friday 26th July 14:17

[Justin Cyder]

If you work it out over 100 miles it's about 12 minutes. 100/56 = 1.7hrs = 1.42 mins.

100/52 = 1.9 = 1.54mins. So not a huge amount when you're likely going to spend an hour queueing & getting tipped on the bay, collecting your notes etc.

[Tango13]

RobCrezz said:

doogz said:

Benbay001 said:

7.5 tonners seem to do 10-12mpg from what i have read.

Mine averaged more like 15-18.

It was horrendously slow though. 135bhp IIRC.

Thats pretty good! My old Evo used to average about that!

My bike has about 130bhp at the rear wheel and i've managed to screw that down to 45mpg. So a for a 7.5 tonner with the aerodynamics of a brick to show 15-18mpg is bloody good.

[CraigyMc]

Tango13 said:

RobCrezz said:

doogz said:

Benbay001 said:

7.5 tonners seem to do 10-12mpg from what i have read.

Mine averaged more like 15-18.

It was horrendously slow though. 135bhp IIRC.

Thats pretty good! My old Evo used to average about that!

My bike has about 130bhp at the rear wheel and i've managed to screw that down to 45mpg. So a for a 7.5 tonner with the aerodynamics of a brick to show 15-18mpg is bloody good.

Unless you're vmaxing your bike, it's not actually generating 130bhp all the time though. (I dunno, perhaps you do drive everywhere at 160mph...?)

C

[Cliftonite]

CraigyMc said:

Unless you're vmaxing your bike, it's not actually generating 130bhp all the time though. (I dunno, perhaps you do drive everywhere at 160mph...?)

C

Is your bike diesel?

[Nickyboy]

They are a lot better than they used to be, Euro 5/6 engines average 8-9mpg and even the high horsepower trucks, Volvo FH750 etc are actually better on fuel than the smaller engines.

[GC8]

CraigyMc said:

doogz said:

Benbay001 said:

7.5 tonners seem to do 10-12mpg from what i have read.

Mine averaged more like 15-18.

It was horrendously slow though. 135bhp IIRC.

I rented one (a 7.5 tonner, dropside) last year. It managed 9mpg. To be fair though, it looked like it'd lived a really hard life.

C

That is pretty rubbish. A fresh eight wheel 32 tonne monster will do approaching that!

[CraigyMc]

GC8 said:

CraigyMc said:

doogz said:

Benbay001 said:

7.5 tonners seem to do 10-12mpg from what i have read.

Mine averaged more like 15-18.

It was horrendously slow though. 135bhp IIRC.

I rented one (a 7.5 tonner, dropside) last year. It managed 9mpg. To be fair though, it looked like it'd lived a really hard life.

C

That is pretty rubbish. A fresh eight wheel 32 tonne monster will do approaching that!

A picture of the vehicle in question:


C

[ZR1cliff]

Renault Premiums are good, I took 20 pallets (6 short of a full load) down to Fareham today and on my return to Sidcup it was showing 10mpg on my dash. I had 8.2mpg when I got to Fareham so the empty run back bumped it up.

[anonymous-user]

littleredrooster said:

On a certain fleet which have theirs restricted to 52 rather than 56, 6.2mpg is their overall fleet average. This saved £2.5m /pa in fuel costs, IIRC

Is that for full trip?? We would get shot at our place for getting 6.2 on a trip. Our full trip target is an average of 9mpg, any less on a regular basis and you get pulled in for a word using the Isotrak as evidence of your braking and over revving etc etc...even though it's useless. For example if you touch the footbrake when engine brake is on and you are empty it records a harsh brake offence, this was only discovered when the driver trainer got pulled I for 12 harsh brakes in one trip over the hills!!
We get about 4-6 loaded and then more coming back empty trying to get the magic 9, it's not actually that hard.
When we leave our main contract we carry between 38 and 43t, Cement contract is always 43.5t and other stuff can be some solo to get loads etc, therefore you are expected to average 9mpg on a weekly basis.

[s p a c e m a n]

My old '99 DAF XF 430 would average 7.7mpg over a week with a mixture of heavy and light stuff, always driven flat out (those 12 minutes over 100 miles mean that you get back before the other lorry and get another £300 job in per day, where he gets back and all of the work has been done)

My 61 plate Renault 460 says 8-9mpg on the read out. Always 44 tonne, driven flat out and idles at 2krpm every time it stops because it runs the blower for the tank. Quite impressive how economical it is really, I get through 200ish litres on the day shift.

[Rumple]

nick s said:

Bit of a random Friday afternoon question. But I was behind an Artic last night and it got me thinking. Does anybody know what they average MPG wise if fully loaded to max capacity? they must cost a bomb to run! Huge engines and huge weight to lug around! It has to be single figures surely?

How much would one cost to run for an average 8 hour day driving round the country constantly on jobs?

Artics running at 44 tonnes will do around 8 mpg, 9 mpg if you have an aerodynamic trailer, a bit less if a tipper or container, you will improve mpg by having a close coupled trailer.
before I came off the road last year I would put 500 to 600 quids worth of diesel in every two days, it was all heavy stuff and I would average 2k plus a week on diesel.