We know you’ve heard this time and again, slow down to get better fuel mileage, but it’s not that simple. Getting the best fuel mileage means finding the sweet spot – the best RPM to run your engine so it’s the most efficient. And with fuel costs consistently ranking as driver’s number one expense, it's important you know how to find the engine sweet spot to save money on fuel costs.
The trick is pulling your load with torque and not horsepower, and using the energy in the right way. When you pull with horsepower you use more energy, and therefore burn more fuel to pull your load.
Torque helps sustain speed when towing or maxing out your vehicle’s cargo capacity—especially in maintaining speed going up hills. If you know there’s a hill ahead, gain speed before you climb it. It will prevent you from shifting gears to get up the hill, using more horsepower.
One way is to think of it as if you’re riding a bike. If you see a hill, you’re going to start pedaling faster – you have to get the momentum going to get up the other side easily. If you were to pedal at the same speed, you would have to work much harder to get up and over the hill. It’s the same thing in your truck. Why work harder and waste the energy if you don’t have to?
Your dealer states peak horsepower and peak torque at specific RPM for each engine. Even though the RPM varies, we consistently found somewhere between 1250 - 1350 RPM is the magic number. The number not to exceed is 1500 RPM. You can contact your dealer to find the specifics for your engine and where your engine’s sweet spot is.
We aren’t telling you how fast you should drive, but if you want to save on fuel - finding the engine sweet spot can leave a sweet amount of savings in your checking account.