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I delivered my load of beer in El Paso, Texas this morning amid near-freezing weather. My truck outside air temperature gauge read 43 degrees but it sure felt a lot colder waiting on the dock of this beer distributor for them to start unloading us.
Afterwards I drove over to our drop yard on the eastern edge of the city and just as I entered the buzzer went off to let me know a loaded trailer was already there for me that needs to be in Ontario, California first thing Monday morning. I chose a random spot to drop my empty trailer and wouldn't you know it, of the 30 or 40 trailers that were sitting there, my new loaded one was right across the lot from me.
I was a bit low on fuel but decided to push on and fuel in New Mexico. I looked at the gauge as I reached the first of two fuel stops, this one in Las Cruces. It showed a quarter tank, and the other stop along I-10 was just over 100 miles away. I decided to risk it and over the next 90 minutes or so became increasingly worried. This is what the gauge read just over 100 miles later:
(Note to the uninitiated: truck fuel tanks are cylindrical and most gauges seem to read the "fullness" of a tank in a linear fashion. Therefore, the first 1/4 of a tank seems to drain quickly, as the small area at the very top of each tank drains, then the middle half tends to take a lot longer as the tanks drain the wide middle region, then it speeds up again as the tanks are nearly empty)
I ended up safely at the fuel stop and added over 172 gallons of fuel on to top her off. Since the tanks hold 200 gallons total, and the last 10% or so seems to be unusable... it was close.
