Curious about fuel mileage for tow vehicles

[Jabroni]

2021 tundra towing ~4,000lb 21 foot single axle travel trailer averages 10 in the mountains and 11-12 flat. Tow/haul mode on and driving pretty slow. Maybe could do even better if I kept speed around 50 on county roads. Upgraded from a 2016 frontier pro-4x and love the extra power and stability of the full size truck. The frontier really complained on the highway in a headwind.

[JIMNLIN]

Originally Posted by CamperLifer

Looks like you are trolling for an argument because all I am saying is 555 or 655 is not a large torque number nowadays so I don't understand why you are using that as an example.

.....read all my post in my reply with attention the last part where I stated.
**Later model LDT diesels amaze me at the power and low fuel consumption pulling heavy load over the old iron.**

My 555 torque wussy diesel as yu call it tells anyone that can comprehend or read my sig its a '03/'04 era Dodge/Cummins and certainly not one of the later model diesels . Nowhere did I dis your or anyones tow vehicle or its
performance.

The OPs thread is about our tow vehicle fuel mileage and that is what my reply was aimed at.

[Bobertgoes]

Class-C with 460 gasser 10-11 mpg, and towing a trailer with 6 people dropped to 7.

Nissan Frontier towing a 5 foot wide cargo trailer camper, 17-18 highway. Narrow is king for mpg's.

[Nlambert]

2016 Ram 3500 DRW - 6.7 Cummins

I average 16.7 mpg in the city going to/from work on the interstate.

When I am pulling the rig (with 4 passengers) in my signature (16k lbs) I average anywhere from 10-11.5 mpg depending upon the amount of hills I have to cross. I average 60-65 mph on the interstate.

[LoveAF]

We pull our 5th wheel that weighs in at 9,200 lbs. decked out for a trip with a 2009 Ford F-250, 4X4, CC, LB, 330 c.i. gasoline engine, automatic, 4.56 gears. When the truck was barely out of warranty I regeard it to the 4.56 from a 3.73. That was the best $2,000.00 I ever spent on performance enhancement! It woke that little gas engine up like I couldn't believe.

I use this truck for heavy towing about 90% of the annual mileage, which amounts to less than 5,000 miles on average, so empty/not towing mileage is meaningless to me to the degree that I've never bothered to figure it. I want the giddyup the deep gearing gives me!

Towing with the 3.73's I got right at 8.5 MPG on average. Following my installation of the 4.56's my towing mileage jumped to 9.5-10 MPG with minimal gear searching and our overall towing experience is exponentially enhanced. In other words it's a joy to tow with now. At this point our truck has just over 47,000 miles on it and is in perfect condition and I wouldn't trade it for the best overpriced, expensive to maintain and even more expensive to repair if need be diesel and pay a dollar a gallon more on average for fuel every time we fill.

[Ivins]

I have 27' (bumper to bumper) Lance TT weight that's 6k lbs when full. When I pulled it with our MB GLS-450 we avaeraged about 10 mpg. I now we have a Chev Silverado 1500 w/Duramax. We now pull about 14-15 mpg, w/o trailer in town it's 24-27 mpg.

My dog really prefers the MB.

[kdauto]

Originally Posted by LoveAF

We pull our 5th wheel that weighs in at 9,200 lbs. decked out for a trip with a 2009 Ford F-250, 4X4, CC, LB, 330 c.i. gasoline engine, automatic, 4.56 gears. When the truck was barely out of warranty I regeard it to the 4.56 from a 3.73. That was the best $2,000.00 I ever spent on performance enhancement! It woke that little gas engine up like I couldn't believe.

I use this truck for heavy towing about 90% of the annual mileage, which amounts to less than 5,000 miles on average, so empty/not towing mileage is meaningless to me to the degree that I've never bothered to figure it. I want the giddyup the deep gearing gives me!

Towing with the 3.73's I got right at 8.5 MPG on average. Following my installation of the 4.56's my towing mileage jumped to 9.5-10 MPG with minimal gear searching and our overall towing experience is exponentially enhanced. In other words it's a joy to tow with now. At this point our truck has just over 47,000 miles on it and is in perfect condition and I wouldn't trade it for the best overpriced, expensive to maintain and even more expensive to repair if need be diesel and pay a dollar a gallon more on average for fuel every time we fill.

Was the gearing change recalibrated in the PCM/TCM? If not, you may simply be reading more miles than actually driiven, thus rendering your calculations off a fair amount.

[Gammel]

Just finished a 2200 mile trip. Half was fairly flat but the other half was quite curvy and hilly. Averaged 12.2 pulling our 8000 lb ORV. The home stretch on I-5 I was getting 13.5! After 13,000 miles I think my PowerStroke is about broken in.

[SGhost]

I get about the same mileage as everyone else. What really gets my boiler going is the disparity between regular fuel and diesel. It used to be about 40 cents. Now its about $1.50 in some parts of the country.


Not real pleasant for the future of the RV industry if this continues for any length of time.

[LoveAF]

Originally Posted by kdauto

Was the gearing change recalibrated in the PCM/TCM? If not, you may simply be reading more miles than actually driiven, thus rendering your calculations off a fair amount.

The recalibrations were done by the local Ford dealership following my completion of the break-in procedure of the new ring and pinions. I've checked the speedometer and odometer against handheld GPS and the speed & mileage numbers are dead nuts on the money.

[LoveAF]

Not an RV but we also pull a Sea Ray Sundeck 210 I/O deck boat on a tandem axle trailer with surge disc brakes that weighs in at approximately 5,400 lbs. on a tandem axle boat trailer with a 2016 Toyota Tacoma 4X4, V-6, automatic, double cab, short box. On flat land we get approximately 15 MPG. That number drops to around 12.5 MPG in the hills on the way to Table Rock Lake/Lake of the Ozarks. Toyota built some guts into that little V-6 engine. It will pull the boat and trailer up and down the grades of the Ozark Mountains with ease! Only modifications I needed to make to the Tacoma was an aftermarket transmission fluid cooler.

[Nlambert]

Originally Posted by LoveAF

We pull our 5th wheel that weighs in at 9,200 lbs. decked out for a trip with a 2009 Ford F-250, 4X4, CC, LB, 330 c.i. gasoline engine, automatic, 4.56 gears. When the truck was barely out of warranty I regeard it to the 4.56 from a 3.73. That was the best $2,000.00 I ever spent on performance enhancement! It woke that little gas engine up like I couldn't believe.

I use this truck for heavy towing about 90% of the annual mileage, which amounts to less than 5,000 miles on average, so empty/not towing mileage is meaningless to me to the degree that I've never bothered to figure it. I want the giddyup the deep gearing gives me!

Towing with the 3.73's I got right at 8.5 MPG on average. Following my installation of the 4.56's my towing mileage jumped to 9.5-10 MPG with minimal gear searching and our overall towing experience is exponentially enhanced. In other words it's a joy to tow with now. At this point our truck has just over 47,000 miles on it and is in perfect condition and I wouldn't trade it for the best overpriced, expensive to maintain and even more expensive to repair if need be diesel and pay a dollar a gallon more on average for fuel every time we fill.

Without wanting to derail the thread, why do you assume that a diesel truck is expensive to maintain? It's really not much more (if any) expensive to maintain than a gas burner counterpart. I've done the math quite a few times and they come out to be a wash. Repairs can be more expensive, but the amount of miles that can be had out of a properly maintained diesel far outweighs a gas burner, so if you intend to keep one for a really long time, even that can wash. It boils down more to preference of what one person wants.

At 200k miles in comparing the service intervals of a Ram 3500 6.4L Hemi and a 2016 Ram 3500 6.7 Cummins, the total maintenance cost works out to be within about $300 of each other, with the extra $300 in maintenance going to the HEMI.

For fuel, the cost also sways towards the diesel engine (including the cost of DEF) when diesel remains below $5/gal. Right now, diesel is $5.39/gal here, so gas is a cheaper option long term by about $5k. As soon as it drops below $5/ diesel is back in the lead. Again, this is estimated over a 200k mile interval.

[kdauto]

Originally Posted by Nlambert

Without wanting to derail the thread, why do you assume that a diesel truck is expensive to maintain? It's really not much more (if any) expensive to maintain than a gas burner counterpart. I've done the math quite a few times and they come out to be a wash. Repairs can be more expensive, but the amount of miles that can be had out of a properly maintained diesel far outweighs a gas burner, so if you intend to keep one for a really long time, even that can wash. It boils down more to preference of what one person wants.

At 200k miles in comparing the service intervals of a Ram 3500 6.4L Hemi and a 2016 Ram 3500 6.7 Cummins, the total maintenance cost works out to be within about $300 of each other, with the extra $300 in maintenance going to the HEMI.

For fuel, the cost also sways towards the diesel engine (including the cost of DEF) when diesel remains below $5/gal. Right now, diesel is $5.39/gal here, so gas is a cheaper option long term by about $5k. As soon as it drops below $5/ diesel is back in the lead. Again, this is estimated over a 200k mile interval.

I've maintained both gas and their diesel counterparts at my shop. On average, the diesel maintenance costs are double the equivalent gas trucks. One of the more expensive to maintain were the Ecodiesel RAMs. Fuel and oil filters all multiple times the cost of their gas counterparts. Oil quantity often double, and in some cases 2.5 the amount if liters the has engine needs. Intervals can be slightly longer on some diesels, but it in no way makes up the cost difference.

As I always say, each engine has their place, and one should simply choose according to their wants and needs.

[Bobertgoes]

Farm equipt all runs on diesel. After burning some 21 food processing plants just recently (very very very not normal at all), and cutting off fertilizer or tripling its price, now by raising diesel prices the farmers might just not harvest...
What is the reason diesel is so much higher? It is the same barrel of oil, the same distillation process, the same gas, diesel, oil produced. Demand is probably less for diesel with the "supply chain" down and fewer trucks out on the road. Why is diesel more expensive? Diesel is not more expensive to produce than gas, it all gets produced at the exact same time, the exact same way...
Im glad I got rid of the diesel truck when I did.