On the Road with Kurt Grote

Hello everyone, boy when I mentioned winter I didn’t realize what a bag of worms I would be opening up! Not to mention just plain being busy! I hope all of you have been just as busy. I seem to think it’s the last effort before Christmas. When I hit winter I HIT winter from all the snow, ice, and sleet in west Texas, to the snow and wind across Wyoming! Of course the wind in Wyoming is nothing unusual for all the drivers that drive there on an normal bases. However I don’t know for sure if its me or the fact that when freightliner built this truck they had all this stuff in mind. The handling of this truck has been flawless! And that is putting it lightly! I dealt with the ice in Texas with a light load only 20,000 lbs in the box. I’m not going to tell you that it didn’t slip and slide because it most definitely. However the way that the truck reacted to the conditions was nothing less than amazing, I’m so proud of this truck I don’t have the vocabulary to express my thoughts. Even at that I ended up going up to Washington state and loading up there. Well first my last fuel up on that run was lake havasu city az. So from there I made all the way up Thu California and in to Washington via hwy 97. if you have never been on or driven this route before I highly recommend that you do so, you will see some of the most beautiful country you will ever want to see! I had made it all the way to Washington made my pick up and made all the way to mountain home id before having to put on any fuel. I’m sure you can do the math on that!! coming out of Washington my gross weight was 80,140 lbs. Here again is where I am very proud of this truck! As I’m going up cabbage, for those of you that don’t know cabbage is mountain that is very steep curvy and dangerous. Going east up cabbage I’m passing trucks!! know I don’t know their weight of course but I would bet not all of them were at gross or over. By the time I got to Wamsutter Wy my fuel mileage was at 6.75!! how about that folks? After fueling up my next challenge was of course elk mountain and Sherman, once again I wasn’t disappointed! For example Sherman is short and steep heading east, the first part of the hill is very steep then just ride after the top! I’m passing other trucks going up nothing below 37 miles per hour I was passing trucks like they were on jacks! I wonder if the truck will continue to improve the more miles that I put on it! Keep reading I’ll let you know. I am now in OK going to deliver in Pryor OK tomorrow and as it stands right now my mpg is 6.35 miles per gallon! I will keep all of you informed on my progress thru out the winter! Until the next truck stop you all be safe!!

Kurt, and Spencer

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 13, 2009 at 7:41 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.