Looking at the “who drives an old truck” thread got me thinking. How many mpg did the old trucks do compared to modern ones with there super clean euro engines. I know there are loads of variables but some comparisons would be interesting. Also are modern lorries (like modern cars) much heavier than there ancestors?
Cars have hardly evolved in the last 30 years as regards mpg, yes they are cleaner, but I remember a mk3 ■■■■■■ would do 30-40 mpg and they don’t do much better now!!
I think your looking back @ the Escorts MPG with somewhat rose tinted specs mate, you would get no where near an average of 30 - 40 mpg with one of those things.
Modern vehicle efficiency has moved on leaps & bounds, not forgetting cars especially are much heavier & more powerful these days yet today,even something absurd like a large petrol BMW will easily achieve mid 30’s economy, something unheard of back in the era of the mk 3 ■■■■■■.
The older trucks where much thirstier, Lucky to get 6mpg out of the old 32t mercs. So now they are 44t and getting around 8mpg, big saving. Remember a boss saying to me once get that bloody hire truck back to BRS. Why boss it is brilliant, not at less than 4mpg it isnt he replied sharply, get shot of it and tell them to give you one of their ERF’s. It was a Bedford TM with a Detroit in it; it really flew, no speed limiters in those days or tachos.
my dad’s C reg Daf 3300 used to do about 6mpg with a fridge. My first truck (a H reg DAF 95 pulling a 16’ decker) would do 7.5 - 8.
The last truck I drove (2646 Actros pulling a fridge) would do 8 - 9.
(I didn’t even dare try to work out the figures for the double drive MAN F-2000 with 5 axle low loader I drove on STGO cat 2 work!)
I’m driving a 05 XF 430 pulling a fridge for supermarket deliveries. She runs at about 87K on the limiter and I’m getting about 7.6MPG
Last XF 430 I had on same work ran at about 83K and I was getting 8.4MPG
The last of the old school motors i drove was a Sed Ack 401 with the 320 14 litre ■■■■■■■ running 38t.
Compare that with my usual Scania 440 running 44t.
Old trucks average consumption was 7mpg, this trucks average is 7.5…we don’t all drive on the motorways all day long so these are realistic figures.
Best i’ve ever got from Sed Ack was 12.4mpg, lightly loaded both ways motorway run into central Manchester kept it to 55mph or so mph for an experiment, normal cruising speed was 70 mph.
Best from modern Scania was just over 15mpg, that was a 59 plate 420 with auto box which i always drive manually but only about 5 tons loaded one way and empty return, 50mph motorway into London and return, fantastic consumption and i was sad enough to take a pic of the dash readout.
Sed Ack was loaded nearly all the time at or around 38t bulk tipper, some off road lots of minor roads farms, quarries and chemical plants, usual cruising speed 70mph when on motorway, didn’t calculate every day so 7mpg average over the months.
Scania loaded at 43t always one way only, empty return, all road work some heavy going but lots of motorway, average 7.5 but can drop to 6 or go up to 9 depending on the run, usual crusing speed 55mph.
(If i use a Daf for the same runs then it can vary between 5.5 and 8.5 depending on the routes)
Anyone spotted the elephant in the room yet.
Speed, if they were specced right the old motors could be just as economical, especially ■■■■■■■ engined if fitted with a decent diff, and we did run at 70mph in those pre limiter days, what made the big ■■■■■■■ so good was that you never changed out of top gear once on the motorway and 70mph came up at 1100 rpm, many operaters underspecified their vehicles, and went for smaller underpowered engines (7 to 10 litre and underpowered foreign vehicles for example) and whilst on paper being more economical, in practice drank the stuff because you had to thrash the living daylights out of them unceasingly and were always dropping gears to make inclines, so journey times were much longer to add to the calculation.
The newer higher powered stuff is reasonable on fuel, but if they were run at 70mph again i wonder what they would be like, be interesting to hear what the Irish lads get on pure motorway work at around 70.
Another thing in modern trucks favour is motorways and RDC’s, when you think of older trucks its too easy to forget that the M25 wasn’t built or was in stages, nor was the M42, many towns were not by passed, if you had to thread these modern trucks through villages and towns and deliver to out of the way places instead of RDC’s situated just off major roads the resulting consumption of modern trucks would be different.
Hiya…the most thirsty everyday engine was the ■■■■■■■ 180bhp at 30 tons gross they only averaged 3mpg.
this is why gardner was a favorite they would return 9mpg if you was lucky. i have herd drivers say they could
return 10 mpg out of a gardner 180 but i don’t think i ever did…i do know that the golden neckter was only
about 8 pence a liter in the late 60’s so not many people bothered nicking the stuff in those days
John
Pete Griff:
The older trucks where much thirstier, Lucky to get 6mpg out of the old 32t mercs. So now they are 44t and getting around 8mpg, big saving. Remember a boss saying to me once get that bloody hire truck back to BRS. Why boss it is brilliant, not at less than 4mpg it isnt he replied sharply, get shot of it and tell them to give you one of their ERF’s. It was a Bedford TM with a Detroit in it; it really flew, no speed limiters in those days or tachos.
I had one of the early Powerliners with EPS and never managed to get it higher than about 6½, in contrast I do a little bit on a new XF105 that returns just over 11 virtually all the time, admitted it’s all motorway but such a difference.
I agree with most of that, if we could get 7mpg people looked at you if you had been listening to drivers in a RDC.
I remember the improvement my 1985 DAF 3300 gave over the Volvo F10 I had previously driven, but at 30ppl it was not as bad as today 
Cheers for that Jeddian very interesting post, not much in it by the looks of it on similar runs. What is/was the unladen weight of the Sed Ack compared to the Scania?
I remember an MAN 362.22 that I used to drive, 12 litre matched to a Twin Splitter, EPIC 
but at 38ton or so on Tilts lucky to return 6.5 average. But would go off the clock 
change up going uphill on long moterway climbs, once the Sheds and ERF’s had got back to hardshoulder 
R440 that i got now averaging 9, but nowhere near as much fun, or skill to drive.
Eaton Twin Splitter, was this the best gear box ever made, clutch pedal to start and stop and clutchless changes up or down all rest of the time, just what my Scania does, Progress 
not
In the 90’s I used to get 8MPG out of most of the stuff I drove which consisted of everything from an A reg Scania 280 wagon and drag, a E reg Leyland Roadtrain with a 290 ■■■■■■■ in up to Scania 320s that were new at the time and everything ran up to 38 tonnes.
Most of 2000s I was getting about the same. However the engines were 400+BHP and the weight had gone up to 44 tonnes.
So still getting the same economy in newer wagons than older ones but the newer ones have engines with 50% more power and are running at about 15% higher weight. When I have run regularly around 36-38t in newer wagons I’ve averaged 10MPG and sometimes as high as 12MPG with a Scannie 420 pulling a tanker running down loaded at around 42 tonnes and back empty on a long run up to Glasgow or down to Bristol.
I think the trucks got better and now seem to be getting worse. They got better for years but improvements seem to have stalled about the time they bought in Euro 3.
hammer:
I think the trucks got better and now seem to be getting worse. They got better for years but improvements seem to have stalled about the time they bought in Euro 3.
I think we could safely put your Iveco Turbostars in the 4 to 5 mpg bracket with the wrong driver
We used to get around 7 mpg with 265 R/Royce powered Foden eight leggers on tipper work, very little motorway driving though. On a longish run from Ashbourne to St Clears and back I had to take a five gallon can of diesel in the cab (plus a gallon of engine oil!) to get me home, but it was only a smallish tank and I was really pedalling hard to get it done in ten hours driving. I think that the old Commer two strokes could get around 15 mpg or more running at 16 ton gross, but you have to realise that they were only around 3 litre engines due to them having two pistons in the one cylinder plus there were only three cylinders at that!
Pete.
In the 70’s I had a Guy big j with a 290 ■■■■■■■■ on a trunk to Penrith it would get about 5 mpg but rarely dropped below 70mph, Same firm, similar job today, I get about 9.8 mpg from a Volvo FH 13 440 running at 56mph.
I don’t think I would have got the Guy in top gear at 56 ! 
Which would I prefer to drive? The dinosaur Guy every time!
3300John:
Hiya…the most thirsty everyday engine was the ■■■■■■■ 180bhp at 30 tons gross they only averaged 3mpg.
this is why gardner was a favorite they would return 9mpg if you was lucky. i have herd drivers say they could
return 10 mpg out of a gardner 180 but i don’t think i ever did…i do know that the golden neckter was only
about 8 pence a liter in the late 60’s so not many people bothered nicking the stuff in those days
John
I once used 60 gallon of diesel, running down to Brum and back empty with a 6 wheeler ERF with a Gardiner in. As you say, fuel was cheap in them days. I also got one of them BRS TMs but it had the ■■■■■■■ L10 290 in. You HAD to cruise at 65/70 to make it go. 38t all the time probably between 6 and 7 mpg. always 10 or 10 l less than the F10s and when the 113 came out it just laughed at us.
My Alpha (Cat C12 345) reached 10.01mpg today 
Identical Fodens are doing 7.5, Daf CF autos around 9mpg, Volvo FE7 320s you are doing well to get 8.2mpg (when not broken down). We sold a 6wheel Foden 4340 with ■■■■■■■ Celect earlier this year and drivers were struggling to get more than 6.5mpg, I managed 7.2
Muckaway:
My Alpha (Cat C12 345) reached 10.01mpg today
Thats quite good Nathan, it might seem a lot for a rigid to some, but the double drive saps a lot of the juice.
Foxstein:
Cheers for that Jeddian very interesting post, not much in it by the looks of it on similar runs. What is/was the unladen weight of the Sed Ack compared to the Scania?
Had to think back then, could get 24 to 25 tons on at 38 max depending on trailer, so between 13 and 14 tons unladen…as an aside i’m sure i recall putting a new tax disc in a 2 axle tractored 38 tonner at around £3200 (or was it £2900 someone will remember) for the year early 80’s, that sounds ludicrous now but was it the case then?, i seem to remember my gaffer getting a reduced road tax when i got a new twin steer 401 in '84 because it was taxed for 6 axles and i couldn’t pull a 2 axle trailer, though that might well have been changed after the first year because it proved too restrictive in operations.
Scania weighs in at 14800 ish depending on trailer.
Whilst on the subject of tare weights, anyone who hasn’t driven one care to guess how much a modern 6 axle car transporter weighs?
Memories not getting any better yernow…
I do remember being able to get 21.5 tons load on at 32 tons though with a Leyland Buffalo tractor and York trailer in the 70’s, there was a lot of expense to run 38 ton for very little payload gain when the weights went up, and with stretching older tandem traiers and bolting another axle on as was the norm then, all sorts of axle loading issues followed on leaf springs.