Can’t keep up is not what I was insinuating. Moreso don’t want to try to keep up on the freeway with a deep geared non od setup.
Sure my C10 with 3.5x gears can run relatively comfortably at 70mph. Does ok in Seattle urban freeways where the avg speed is like 20mph lower than than most cities. But it would not be so awesome in Denver or Dallas say, where 70mph is getting run over, 80 is getting passed or your parked in the right lane with the turban Suburbans and 90 is keeping up with the general flow.
Now WA is differnet. Even the open highway interstate 70mph is pretty acceptable. WA is weirdly slow and the po po keep it that way. I could run the K20 all the way to tri cities or Spokane and not get run over at 70. It would still not be a great experience.
You understand. You drive a lot for work from what I’ve gathered. You ain’t running your k30 dually 300 mi a day. You have a newer vehicle.
For whatever it may be worth, I wasn't focusing just on your comment, but really the general opinion of many recently. But you did bring up a couple points that I'd like to talk about.
So you can keep up with traffic, but you just don't want to try. Why not? Just because of the higher than normal rpm's, compared to modern trucks? RPM is just a number. If the engine is happy, then the engine is happy. Is it because you are worried about wear on the engine? That seems to be the biggest concern for many. But for many of those people, the alternative is an LS drivetrain swap in which they are ditching the current engine anyway. So why not run the thing for all it's worth and then when/if it expires, do the drivetrain swap then? Many people probably would never even kill their engine running down the interstate with no OD.
And as far as the driving I do for work. I most definitely would drive my old K30 everywhere if the owner would allow it. Lol, and pay for the maintenance like he does for the company trucks. But do to insurance reasons and the fact that he doesn't want his business relying on a 40+ year old truck (understandably), I can only use it for doing local work.
Occasionally I can slip something by though. Last summer I managed to use my 454 SS as a supervisor truck for a couple months on a somewhat local job. Also early this year I used my '00 Express van on a quick job in Texas, because I trusted it more than any of the work trucks I had available to me at the time.
