I WORK FOR A COMPANY WHO LAST YEAR RESTRICTED THEIR WHOLE FLEET TO 52 MPH AS IT WAS JUST AFTER WE LOST ONE OF OUR DRIVERS (R.I.P. AL), WE GUESSED IT WAS FOR INSURANCE REASONS BUT AFTER A COUPLE OF WEEKS THE LONG HAUL ROUTES CAN’T COMPLETE THEIR ROUTES AT 52 M.P.H SO THEIR LORRIES WERE UNRESTRICTED BACK TO 56MPH. SO WE ARE A BIT CONFUSED.COM ANYBODY CLEAR UP THIS ISSUE, PLEASE?
0zzy:
I WORK FOR A COMPANY WHO LAST YEAR RESTRICTED THEIR WHOLE FLEET TO 52 MPH AS IT WAS JUST AFTER WE LOST ONE OF OUR DRIVERS (R.I.P. AL), WE GUESSED IT WAS FOR INSURANCE REASONS BUT AFTER A COUPLE OF WEEKS THE LONG HAUL ROUTES CAN’T COMPLETE THEIR ROUTES AT 52 M.P.H SO THEIR LORRIES WERE UNRESTRICTED BACK TO 56MPH. SO WE ARE A BIT CONFUSED.COM ANYBODY CLEAR UP THIS ISSUE, PLEASE?
Fuel savings, 52mph vs 56mph is a massive fuel saving, but 50 vs 52 with trailers OVER 13’9 is another big saving depending on aerodynamics etc.
If a route can’t be completed at 52mph, then it shouldn’t be run in my opinion, too much can go wrong for such a small margin to make any difference.
the pen pushers think it saves fuel.
how well caliberated is it? doing 52, but showing 55 makes the pen pusher look good.
it just wastes time, and dosn’t save fuel.
TBH from what I have heard it actually makes no difference if you run at 52 or 56 ( but will stand corrected if wrong as this could be a mmtm ) but yep the trailer do make a difference
Please dont shout ( turn the caps off & the bold I am not that blind yet 
)
0zzy:
I WORK FOR A COMPANY WHO LAST YEAR RESTRICTED THEIR WHOLE FLEET TO 52 MPH AS IT WAS JUST AFTER WE LOST ONE OF OUR DRIVERS (R.I.P. AL), WE GUESSED IT WAS FOR INSURANCE REASONS BUT AFTER A COUPLE OF WEEKS THE LONG HAUL ROUTES CAN’T COMPLETE THEIR ROUTES AT 52 M.P.H SO THEIR LORRIES WERE UNRESTRICTED BACK TO 56MPH. SO WE ARE A BIT CONFUSED.COM ANYBODY CLEAR UP THIS ISSUE, PLEASE?
Welcome to TNUK you don’t need to SHOUT to be heard though.
Animal, are you standing? Because you are going to be corrected 
I had a 530BHp DAF Superspace, if I ran it at 56 on the limiter all the time, I would get in the region of 7.5 MPG, but, when driving at 52 all the time, I was regularly getting 9+ MPG 
But, it is not purely down to the speed, driving style comes in to it too, if you ■■■■ it in every gear, you will not get as much as if you keep it in the green
There’s actually a directive that says limiters have to be re set from 90 kmh to 85 kmh.
animal:
TBH from what I have heard it actually makes no difference if you run at 52 or 56 ( but will stand corrected if wrong as this could be a mmtm ) but yep the trailer do make a differencePlease dont shout ( turn the caps off & the bold I am not that blind yet
I did containers, my truck was capable of 56 (on the sat nav, 90km on the dash). At that speed, my average week was around 7.8mpg, at 52mph it was around 9 and at 50mph it was 9.2.
I found though, with 40gp containers I could run at 56 and still get around 9ish average, but 40hq or 20’ containers would drop it considerably, 51mph on cruise control, showing 50mph on sat nav I found to be most economical and the most relaxing drive as most vehicles passed me quite easily but I still had 6mph in the bag for passing that bloody Micra.
shuttlespanker:
Animal, are you standing? Because you are going to be correctedYep I was standing
I had a 530BHp DAF Superspace, if I ran it at 56 on the limiter all the time, I would get in the region of 7.5 MPG, but, when driving at 52 all the time, I was regularly getting 9+ MPG
But, it is not purely down to the speed, driving style comes in to it too, if you ■■■■ it in every gear, you will not get as much as if you keep it in the green
Yep this as well
Carryfast:
There’s actually a directive that says limiters have to be re set from 90 kmh to 85 kmh.
Interested:Please quote your reference,thanks!
Wincanski have had all their units restricted to 52mph, least them down here pulling containers. ‘Better fuel economy’ they said. Whatever, I’m paid by the Hour so the longer the job takes, the more I earn.
Carryfast:
There’s actually a directive that says limiters have to be re set from 90 kmh to 85 kmh.
You’re extracting the urine. Can you back up that silly statement■■?
limeyphil:
the pen pushers think it saves fuel.
how well caliberated is it? doing 52, but showing 55 makes the pen pusher look good.it just wastes time, and dosn’t save fuel.
Well it’s all relative really isn’t it and I agree,it might not actually be doing 52 but it’s more the reduction in speed that makes the difference.
That may be in your experience but in mine,on a short to medium run the time lost is counted in a few minutes and the fuel saved is counted in mpg.
On a long run I agree,the time lost would be too great and we all have homes to get to eh
Anyway…Shuttlespanker and his ■■■■■■ gear…
I have an audi a6 2.0tdi not a truck I know, but on my 15 mile commute to work at the speed limit I was getting around 42mpg, I slowed to 55 then 50 , fuel consumption got better, then I read that once you increase your speed over 50 you burn half your fuel combating wind resistance, I now leave 5mins earlier for work , travel an average of 47mph & return 67.3 mpg , so speed does make a difference in all cases,
On average reducing from 56mph to 50mph will produce a fuel saving of around 22% during that particular run where the vehicle is cruising. Therefore reducing to 52mph would give in the region of 15-18% saving. This is an average. Some trucks more some trucks less
Reverse of that - take your average 3.5t panel van and cruise at 90mph. Compared to 70mph this gives arounf a 55% increase in fuel consumption - that’s a massive amount.
We have some Iveco Stralis’s … we were getting around an overall average of 8.5 - 9mpg for the work we do. We spoke to iveco to slow them down to 52 and they said it would make mpg worse as the engine produced optimum torque at this and that revs and speed. We slowed them anway and the average improved by around 0.5 mpg. it really depends on the work as this only affects motorway work - even fuel carriageways fon’t count becasue of speed restrictions. We proved the savings to Iveco who basically said we were still wrong cos they know best.
We had one Premium got worse - far worse. Turns out it wasn’t reching 12th gear and driver was foot to the floor everywhere in 11th. We educated him to let the pedal off a bit or use cruise so the auto didn’t hold 11th - vast improvement.
Most of our drivers will - if being honest - tell you it makes little difference to a properly planned run. As someone already said - if the run can’t be done at 52mph then it’s badly planned anyway
Lets talk money. my calculations based on our previous fuel usage and having worked out the average of motorway journies, mileages etc etc (this all took a lot of working out and loads of data) I reckon we will save around £200,000 a year across a fleet of 70 vehicles and that’s a conservative calculation - that is a lot of dosh to anyone. Even if I screwed my figures up and we only save 50% of that - still £100,000. OK I really got it wrong and we only saved 10% of what I calculated - still £20,000 saved. my figures have tried to include the difference in wages the slower speeds make etc etc
Any driver should be able to test the theory. Do a motorway run on the limiter and check the onscreen average (never accurate anyway). Now do the same run on cruise at 52mph and see what you get. It will most definitly improve.
We have fancy trackrs that connect to the engine canbus and give us exact fuel consumption. We can 100% see the savings at 52mph. I’d like to try 50 but then journey times do get a little slow and there’s always the old safety issue on the motoways.
Spoke to a driver yeaterday. his run took him over woodhead pass and was 118 miles. Had he gone via motorway it would have been nearer 130 miles but the fuel saving via the motorway at 52mph would far far outweigh the distance and time savings he claimed Woodhead gave him. All that up and down the gears, on the brakes and hill climbing he was down to around 6mpg as opposed to almost 10 he gets on the motorway. Driver couldn’t see what I was getting at though. “Woofhead is quicker” he then sat at the delivery point for 2 hours cos he got there early 
ShropsBri:
limeyphil:
the pen pushers think it saves fuel.
how well caliberated is it? doing 52, but showing 55 makes the pen pusher look good.it just wastes time, and dosn’t save fuel.
Well it’s all relative really isn’t it and I agree,it might not actually be doing 52 but it’s more the reduction in speed that makes the difference.
That may be in your experience but in mine,on a short to medium run the time lost is counted in a few minutes and the fuel saved is counted in mpg.
On a long run I agree,the time lost would be too great and we all have homes to get to eh
Anyway…Shuttlespanker and his ■■■■■■ gear…
Not really my experience.
Trafford Park to Southampton is 220 miles +/-, with a good bit of it duel carriageway (50mph limit) and then there’s the junctions, average speed cameras and other traffic.
But, based on 56mph it would take just under 4hrs, and it would take just under 4.5hrs at 50mph. But, you can’t do 56mph all the time, so the savings then start to drop considerably, so much so that a lad at our works left Seaforth at same time as me, and I arrived in Southampton less than 10mins after him, his average was 7.6mpg, mine was around 10mpg, both with 40’ High Cubes on and both similar weight.
He claims he doesn’t speed, so I assume he did 50mph down the A34, so might have had more of a lead if he didn’t, but it’s still a good bit under the ‘calculated differences’ and the savings in fuel were FAR more considerable. He’d have used around 29 gallons of fuel, I used around 22 gallons. This is according to the on board computer though. But 7 gallons at 6 quid a gallon (or even at £4.50 if we’re talking a quid per litre) is £42 (or £31.50) which is a damned site more than 10 mins wages, in fact it’s around 3hrs wages.
So thats half an hour on half a shift ideally but really he saved 10 minutes.
It may be so but I run at night so there’s no traffic and so it is sat on the limiter all the way up the motorway until I stop for the 45 and carry on hence ‘gaining’ an extra hour over the day than if I was driving at 50…although these are ideal conditions.If I was doing your run I may well drive at 50.
I’m not disagreeing with you as when I was doing a shorter run and knew that I would still get there whetever doing 50 or 56 I did 50.
Companies like yours are a nusance, and a danger on motorways they should be banned off them or the limit lowerd for all trucks.
If you can better your fuel figures by a couple of miles per gallon and the vehicle is running night and day you can easily save approximately £25,000 per year … by heck, we could have a good pay rise, ■■?
0zzy:
I WORK FOR A COMPANY WHO LAST YEAR RESTRICTED THEIR WHOLE FLEET TO 52 MPH AS IT WAS JUST AFTER WE LOST ONE OF OUR DRIVERS (R.I.P. AL), WE GUESSED IT WAS FOR INSURANCE REASONS BUT AFTER A COUPLE OF WEEKS THE LONG HAUL ROUTES CAN’T COMPLETE THEIR ROUTES AT 52 M.P.H SO THEIR LORRIES WERE UNRESTRICTED BACK TO 56MPH. SO WE ARE A BIT CONFUSED.COM ANYBODY CLEAR UP THIS ISSUE, PLEASE?
its saver for the many new drivers