Diesel,,,, the rest of the story??

wintersun wrote:
When people run a business they cannot guess at numbers like so many of the people posting information they pulled out of some orifice. How can anyone do the math and spend $45,000 for a diesel truck instead of $36,000 and spend more at the pump, more for oil changes (the crankcase takes twice as much oil), and think that they are going to come out ahead?

Anyone of even minimal intelligence can check the sticker prices for gas and diesel trucks or use gasbuddy.com to check the fuel prices for regular gas versus premium around the country or check the amount of oil and frequency of changes recommended by the diesel engine manufacturers by downloading the owners manuals. Non of this is rocket science but it would take a a little bit of effort instead of simply mouthing off - it may not be as fun for that inner child but it would be more helpful to the OP, if that is of any importance.

If you like driving a diesel truck or pull a heavy trailer that requires the power of a diesel truck then go for it but it is stupid to try to justify the decision based on the costs involved. How anyone in their right mind (which is probably a bad assumption) can go 25K miles without changing the oil on a diesel and think that this is a good thing has to be incredibly ignorant and must think that the engineers at the SAE and the truck engine manufactures are being silly to recommend more frequent service intervals or are in league with the oil companies.

It is also dumb to compare reliability of one truck by one owner and extrapolate that to all trucks for all years which number in the millions. There are lots of people driving Ford Pintos and Ford Crown Victoria's and Ford Explorers without having been incinerated but it would be foolish to discount the problems which have caused the deaths of many people in these cars when they burst into flames or flipped and burst into flames.

I do run a fleet and business. Our Ford trucks have cost us a fortune to maintain. Our Dodges with the Cummins holds 12 qts and a Hemi holds 8. The Cummins get changed every 7,500-10,000 miles and I change our gas 150/1500 trucks at 4-5000 miles. Now you also have to keep in mind that our HD trucks 100% of the time weigh 75-95% of their GVWR and are hooked to tool trailers in the 7-10,000 range when ever they move to a new job. Now what kind of fuel mileage do you think the gas trucks get loaded like that and what the diesel trucks get. I can tell you that one of them is well into the single digits and the other is in the double digits. We run our trucks to around 300,000 miles. So I can tell you from MY records of both that the diesels cost us less than the gas in a heavy duty truck (except for a certain brand "F" in a certain run of years. We have yet to buy a 6.7.;)