Assisting…

Looking through the forums associated with any computer game is always a fraught activity.  Very often you will find people who are clearly disturbed and craving the attention of others so that they can be abusive.   Actually, that’s true of a lot of social media where people take advantage of being ‘anonymous’ to be unpleasant.   As an aside, from a telecoms/computer engineer… They aren’t as anonymous as they think 😉   But back to games forums and a pleasant experience I had in Euro Truck…

While taking a look through the forum I came across a request for advice on fuel efficient truck builds.   It’s an unusual one because many of the players are more interested in ‘beautifying’ their trucks than fuel efficiency and building a realistic fleet.   It is, after all, a game that just happens to try and simulate at the same time 😉   I have been observing and researching the real trucking world to try and achieve accuracy myself, so I felt able to answer the question in a reasonable way.   The question as posted was: –

Been playing the game for quite some time, and I’m really enjoying it, specially the part where you grow the size of your own company. After some time, saved enough money to buy the biggest and meanest truck in game (I think). 750hp, 8×4 Volvo. Enjoyed it at first, performs consistently across varying loads (4 – 50 tons more or less), but then I saw its fuel consumption on the truck info, spikes to 600L/100km at low gears or when I’m simply pushing it.

I know that fuel can be neglected since there are gas stations everywhere and the reward for deliveries pretty much negates the costs, but spending a lot on that really bugs me for some reason.

I’m no car or truck guy, so I’ll need suggestions.

My preferred setup is as follows:
– Any Brand
– 500hp =< Truck < 600hp
– 4×2 (For that large fuel tank)
– max of 25 ton load
– can go uphill with the said loads with relative ease
– fuel efficient (I really don’t wat to see the engine eating up so much fuel, like 600L/100km)
— If you have better suggestions, please do share —

Thanks in advance.

I can see that this player has come to the point where realism is more important than having the most powerful truck or the best paint job 🙂  So I replied with the following: –

Sounds like you want to set up a ‘real-world’ fleet 🙂 That’s my preference too. I would suggest taking a trip to your nearest main road and seeing what the fleets out there are using. I did that in London and the majority of artic operators use 4×2 – around 60% of the vehicles passing. The majority of the rest were 6×2/4 mid-lift. Only specialist ‘heavy haulers’ shifting plant favoured 6×4. I’ve only ever seen 2 8×6’s in the last few years, so they are very rare.

The next thing is engine size – most fleets use 420-480HP engines. I saw a video review on YouTube for the Renault Range T which predicted that the vast majority of sales of that truck in the UK would have the 460HP engine. Things like the MAN V8 680HP and the Volvo 750HP are for specialists only (or people playing ETS2) 😉

I would suggest that you pick a truck make you like the look of or the cab layout and fit an engine in the range suggested. Most of the trucks will have a green arc on the rev-counter and it is commonly in the 1000-1500rpm range. Normally you want to be keeping the rev needle in that arc as that is where the engine is providing its power most efficiently. Above the green arc and the engine rapidly becomes a diesel-to-noise converter 😉 Ideally, when cruising on the motorway / autobahn you want to be doing a speed in top gear that places the rev counter in the bottom quarter of the green arc – at least that’s my understanding. This is where the engine produces most torque so it maintains the speed more easily.

Consider your route before you set out and if the GPS is sending you through the Ardennes on a back road consider re-routing on main roads instead. 50km at 80kph is much more fuel efficient than the same distance at 60kph mainly because you can use the top gear all the time.

Check out the drive train mods available through the workshop – these will allow you to select a set of gear ratios to suit the area you do most of your driving, remembering that bit about bottom of the green arc mentioned above. These mods also allow you to pick Euro 6 engines which are more efficient than the Euro 5 ones.

V8’s don’t use more fuel than in-line as such – they just tend to be larger CC engines and making it a V8 takes up less space than an in-line engine which is important in Europe with the legal restrictions.

Hope this helps 🙂

I’m pleased to say that my advice was gratefully received.   It did however leave me in a little quandary of my own.   I have a truck fleet in Euro Truck that is exclusively 6×4 and I run whatever jobs are available.   It’s not the most fuel efficient way of doing things if you read my analysis above!   So I also have a new project – to start a new profile and run a fuel efficient company.   That means mainly 4×2 tractor units for the bulk of the fleet and only hauling appropriate cargo with the vehicle being driven.   I’m keeping the old profile for testing truck mods and occasional fun driving of the gas-guzzlers but we’re going to build a proper efficient company and I will share the progress with you – starting from the initial time as a driver for hire.  Hope you find it interesting.