Day 2!

Evening ya’ll! Well today was day two in the brand new truck. I sure love the extra room with all the cabinets and enough room to put all my junk! I still have yet to fully unpack everything and put things where they belong yet but I will get there. I do enjoy driving this truck even though it does require retraining of my brain….. Here is some information about this truck that I know so far: 2016 Freightliner Cascadia Evolution, Date of Manufacture 8/15. Detroit DD15TC Motor Detroit DT12 Auto-manual transmission Basically, it is a manual transmission that automatically shifts through the gears. It has Auto-economy mode which selects the best gear as you drive down the highway. It also has Auto Ecoast which means it automatically coasts if you are going downhill. And finally, I can take full control and drive manually and shift the gears myself with the push of a button. I am learning it is best to use manual for climbing the bigger hills and mountains as well as going downhill. For the general flat highways, I use the automatic. The fastest I can go using the pedal is 60MPH. If I want to go the full 62MPH, I must have it in cruise control and raise it up to 62 by controls on the steering wheel. It also has Pass Smart which means I am allowed to drive up to 5MPH faster (up to 67mph) to pass another vehicle if needed, but only for up to 30 minutes every 24 hours. The Jake Brake is pretty nice since that also is on the transmission stalk on the steering wheel. This truck also has Lane Departure warnings and camera. That means if I drift to either lane lines without my turn signal, it mutes the radio and then sounds an alarm. If I drift to the right line, it sounds the alarm on the right side speakers. If I drift to the leftside lines, it sounds the alarm on the left speaker. I am sure you have heard it a few times during the construction areas where they placed cones too far into in my lane! It has alot of cool things such as a digital section of the dash that gives me readouts of everything you could possibly want to know such as MPG, outside temperatures, temps of “everything” from oil to water to axles and everything in between. Lots of lights to warn if anything should go wrong…. This should give you some idea of what we have to drive now. I like it. I will take photos etc when I can, but first comes the important things such as driving, planning, eating and sleeping! We are doing pretty good with the schedule so far and tomorrow we will see how I feel about getting closer to 600 miles for the day. Today we hit 531. If you want more detailed and real specific information about anything I mentioned, I am sure you could find everything out if you Google it! See ya in the morning as we finish Wyoming then start Nebraska and possibly into Iowa a bit.