Rear-End Gear Ratios

[Hammerhead]

That whole post is fantastic, if you are having a hard time wrapping your head around all of that, let me point this part out...

(08-10-2017 )Rawze Wrote:  Let the weight work for you not against you. A lot of guys who slow down, push the truck harder for longer at lower speeds because they are used to going faster and so they are trying to hold more constant speeds in terrain where you simply can't.

This is the single most important thing to learn while slowing down.
Learning to slow down properly can be very painful. Slowing down doesn't mean never breaking 58mph, it means not pushing the right pedal to the floor and leaving it there the whole way up the hill. It also means when you get a nice downhill push that runs you up to 70ish in neutral for >5 miles, to just let the damn thing go, just don't use the fuel pedal to hold you there!
And it is almost always the one thing that people don't learn, which is why they don't see the gains.
For ZeroNtheDark, in your terrain and conditions there are places where this will absolutely help you kill it, and others where it will completely destroy it for you. I've been to PA, we haul cranes out of there and get routed all over the 2 lane backroads...for the larger percentage of time, I feel for ya, it sucks!
You are so close, that he might as well be your neighbor, go and see {shop name removed. no longer recommended} the trip will pay big dividends...