Hi
As mentioned above, there are a lot of constraints.
1) How many drivers and how do they share the load? How many navigators? How do they each do trying to nap in the tow vehicle?
2) How often are stops / breaks needed by the crew? If you have a 20 minute stop every two hours, that has an impact.
3) What kind of gas mileage do you get and how big is your fuel tank? How much "fuel risk" are you willing to take? We tend to take a very careful look at any place we get fuel. That may involve a drive by before pulling in. Some folks don't go below 1/4 tank when towing ...
4) Where are you stopping along the way? There are a lot of places I would not want to pull into after dark. Way to easy to miss something and do some damage. Our normal goal is to be to "end of day" before 5 PM. Are you in a normal campground or a Walmart lot? ....
5) How much of an in route mess do you allow for? At least here on the east coast, a couple hours of delay is not at all uncommon in a typical day of travel. That 5 pm arrival can quickly turns into 7 or 8 PM. Hello darkness ....
6) How early do you get up in the morning? If you typically all are up and going by 5 AM, good for you. I'll see you in a couple hours
. If you can get rolling from dead asleep to on the road and fed in under 2 hours, that's doing pretty well.
7) How much time does everybody need in bed? That's not quite the same a sleep time. Eight hours of sleep may equate to nine hours between going to bed and getting up in the morning. If you pull in at 8 PM, ready to set up and do dinner. Getting to bed by 10 may be a stretch. Getting up the next day at 5 AM is 7 hours in bed and not enough sleep for most of us.
8) How fast do you drive? How fast do you drive in traffic? This can be a different answer in different parts of the country. To me, doing 75 to 80 MPH two car lengths from the guy in front of you is not a good idea. There are a lot of folks out there that seem to disagree ....
9) How many days / weeks / months are you doing this? One or two crazy days is not the same thing as 10 or 15 days solid.
That's a list, but it doesn't really cover everything.
If you are going to do 800 miles a day, out here it would look like:
1) Average speed when moving 60 to (maybe) 68 MPH
2) Average % of time stuck in traffic 30%
So net, you are averaging around 50 MHP "on the road".
3) MPG in start stop / up hill / down hill 10 MPG. Fuel fill at 30 gallons so 300 mile range. Fill up ~3 times in 800 miles. Typical fill time (time off the route to time back on route) to get to a pump you can fit at, 20 minutes.
So, you have an hour for fill ups, and 800 miles at 50 mph gets you to 17 hours behind the wheel. If you toss in a stop every couple hours for "needed breaks", that bumps up into the 18 or 19 hour range.
Can you do this? Sure you can. Over the road truck drivers run these sort of hours a lot.
Back the miles down to 400 and you are rolling for 8 hours. You have at least one fill up and a few breaks. Is that 10 hours from roll out to roll in or something less? Depends on how lucky you are that day.
Spend some time on small roads going 30 MPH (and in towns with 20 MPH limits), your average speed will take a hit. That scenic getaway out in the woods *probably* is more than a hundred feet off the interstate ....
So lots of variables and no one simple answer.
Bob
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