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So I'm renting a 26-foot diesel truck from Penske to do a 1200 mile drive from the Michigan-Indiana border to just north of Orlando, FL mid-July. The terrain I'll be driving through is pretty flat except for going through the mountains between Tennessee and Kentucky... I'd say maybe 4-5 hours of bigger hills and one decent sized mountain to go up and down.
The truck will be fully loaded so I'm estimating it will only be taken up to 50-55 max speed. The gas tank is a 50 gallon diesel tank. Penske says it does 10 mpg but other websites have said 4, 6, 8, etc which leaves me unsure of how much to budget for gas.
Current diesel prices are around $3.841. Anyone done a drive like this before? How much did it cost in gas? Any help would be appreciated!
i drove a friend's diesel budget truck from phoenix to chicago. IIRC it was about $1,000 in fuel. The truck averaged about 8 mpg, but the initial climb out of phoenix to flagstaff was brutal. I was able to actually watch the fuel gauge drop! this truck was loaded, but not towing a car.
I'm pricing out a move and estimated 8 mpg if i get a diesel and 6 if I get a gas.
To do the math longform in case someone reading this doesn't know,
1200 miles divided by 8mpg would use 150 gallons of fuel. using the below link the price of diesel is $3.852 on average, and you'll be driving in both high and low priced states. So we'll use the average. 150 gallons time $3.852 is $577.80.
We moved from CA to TN first of June 2013 and was fully loaded with a Penske 26 and car trailer. Our average was 7 mpg, total diesel bill was $1090. The mountain ranges SUCKED the tank down much faster than you could imagine! Some parts of the trip required looking for gas within 3 hours of the last fill up. Allot for extra fuel because in our instance, there would be a longer line waiting for diesel because truckers would leave their truck in the fuel line to run in to toilet.
On another note, Penske did send a truck out within 30 minutes of our distress call because the voltage meter was fluctuating too much. Within 2 hours, the alternator was replaced and we were back on our way. The repairman said if we hadn't paid attention to it, we might have been transferring our stuff to another truck. NOT something we would have wanted to do on the side of a busy interstate!
I did a similar move 5 years ago... Truck will do almost 70 fully loaded however at close to 70 you will get 6 to 7 mpg. If you slow to 55 you'll get 11 mpg...
I recently did a move from Michigan to Orlando in a 26 foot Penske fully loaded not hauling a car. I averaged right at 8 MPG and drove 1185 miles and that had major hills and mountains in Tennessee and Kentucky as mentioned before and it cost right at $350 with average gas price of about $2.30 for diesel. Note that Penske for their 22 and 26 foot trucks are all diesel. The max MPH we could get was about 68 on downhill parts of the trip due to the speed governor that was on the vehicle. Everything went smoothly and would use Penske again in the future.
We just made the trip from Grand Rapids, Michigan to Orlando, FL in a 26 ft Penske! It costed about $400-500 I think. I havent fully added up the receipts from the move though but Im guessing thats about right. It was a LONG drive! I swear that truck ate up the gas, it felt like we had to stop all the time!!
Oh and we also were towing a car behind it so I think that sucked up the gas a bit too. We stopped every couple hours I believe!
I am about to take a Pensky truck from San Diego to NC, I see large price differences between auto diesel and #2 diesel, which will the 26' use?
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