m0n0wall Forum - Static Routes not being applied

There's something odd going on with my static routes... they sometimes work Huh

Setup:
m0n0 (virtual appliance, v1.34) is the gateway to internet for many virtual machines.
WAN IP address is supplied by DHCP like such:
IP: 172.0.0.100
Subnet: 255.255.255.0
DefaultGW: 172.0.1.1 (<-- this is an uncontrollable problem, note the gw is in a different subnet)

I need for the default gateway to be 172.0.0.1 (address of another switch/router that actually resides in my subnet).

The IT folks do some sort of magic to make that work for a lot of machines in our office, but it always runs havoc with non Windows machines. My solution:
Create 2 static routes like:
0.0.0.0/1 uses gateway 172.0.0.1
128.0.0.0/1 uses gateway 172.0.0.1

Once I make the rules and click Apply, communication begins working.... until I reboot m0n0. After a reboot, the route doesn't work anymore. To make it work again, all I have to do is open the route (making NO changes) and click save/apply then it works again.

Any idea why m0n0 is behaving like that?