Time! Time flies when you're having fun! Time goes faster the older you get! Time is valuable! You can't go back in time! You want to get paid on time! You are expected to be on time! You're out of time! Time to go! Time is ticking! And finally, there's even a song titled “Time in a Bottle”.
As we all know, time is important. In the end, it's the only thing we have of value. My previous project, named 70+/10, where the goal was 10 mpg at speeds up to 75 mph where safe, legal, and beneficial, sort of temporarily got put on hold as fuel prices escalated. Time management while driving, and home time, continue to have modified versions of this previous project and come back into play. You see, I have a problem, my normal semi-dedicated route is 1,382 miles in each direction.
Previously in this project, I typically had to run speeds up to 75 mph where legally posted. By doing this, generally, I could complete the journey in two days for each direction. What it amounted to, is that I eliminated a complete 10-hour rest period and picked up a little bit of time from the increased speed. What is the value of 10 extra hours at home? Let's look at that as a purely financial situation. My fuel mileage at the higher speeds in my 2022 Freightliner Cascadia, with its Detroit power train and Hendrickson OPTIMAAX liftable pusher suspension system, was at an average of 9.8 mpg. Cruising at slower speeds of 65 mph and under, this same truck was able to average fuel mileage in the high 10s.
Let's just go to the extreme on these numbers, and figure the fuel mileage at 9.2 mpg at a fuel price of $5.00 per gallon:
2,764 miles divided by 9.2 mpg, equals 300.43 gallons. Multiply that by $5.00 per gallon, and that’s a total fuel cost of $1,502.17 for my round trip.
Now, let's go to the extreme in the other direction, and slow down to speeds under 65 mph, and figure the fuel mileage at 11 mpg.
2,764 miles divided by 11 mpg, equals 251.272 gallons. Multiply that by $5.00 per gallon, and that’s a total fuel cost of $1,256.36 for my round trip. That’s a difference of $245.81.
$246 is a pretty good chunk of change! However, it adds a total of about 12 hours, including the additional 10-hour break to the trip. As a side note here, the high-speed numbers were coming in closer to 9.8 mpg, and the lower-speed versions were closer to 10.7 mpg. As of today, with my fuel discount card, my fuel only costs $3.841 per gallon, which drastically changes all of these numbers.
The importance of time management here is to figure out how much time you’re saving, and what is the cost of saving time. In either case, you could reap the benefits of either having more home time or having more fuel cost savings. And for an added challenge, we can work on having both.
Until next time! Be safe and be profitable.