Flutterby™! : Replacing the truck

Next unread comment / Catchup all unread comments User Account Info | Logout | XML/Pilot/etc versions | Long version (with comments) | Weblog archives | Site Map | | Browse Topics

Replacing the truck

2016-01-20 00:00:58.199151+00 by Dan Lyke 3 comments

A couple of times recently, when first starting out in the morning, the truck hasn't moved forward when I've shifted into Drive. Wiggle the column a bit, and it starts moving. It also did this one evening coming home from work, worryingly after I'd driven it about a thousand feet (pulled out of parking, stopped at a stop sign, went to merge into traffic, whoops!).

With the weekend Monterey trip, Charlene said "rent a car". So I did. Now weekend Enterprise rates are pretty damned good, I've got Friday through Monday for $62.61 with 400 miles, extra miles are $.20 each, and I think I'll come out just about even.

However, I got to thinking: Truck has a 17 or 18 gallon tank, gets about 320 miles per tank. Gas is cheap right now, but if it were not a whole lot more expensive, given that a compact car is almost certainly going to get double that mileage-wise, I'll almost make up the cost of the rental in gas alone.

This is something seriously worth considering as we go to replace the truck... Especially since I've been commuting more.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Work, productivity and environment Heinlein Travel Automobiles Machinery ]

comments in ascending chronological order (reverse):

#Comment Re: Replacing the truck made: 2016-01-20 11:13:55.525025+00 by: DaveP

I replaced my 2000 Chevy Blazer (a little bigger than yours, and an SUV, rather than an open bed) recently. Being out on the end of the bell curve, height-wise, and having lost all patience with auto dealers and manufacturers, I went to my friend who sells trucks and ended up with a 2010 Chevy Silverado crew cab short bed. It's significantly heavier, more powerful, seats six adults and can carry sheets of plywood with the tailgate down. All that and it gets almost identical mileage to the Blazer around town. Towing a trailer with a canoe on the roof for a couple hundred miles of two-lane country roads? Slightly better mileage. No idea how it'll do on the interstate yet, but I'm happy with it.

I still have money down on an Elio if they should ever ship, but at this point, I'm pretty sure they're just a Ponzi scheme with a twist. And in the summer I'll do most of my miles on the motorcycles.

#Comment Re: Replacing the truck made: 2016-01-20 17:57:22.372829+00 by: Dan Lyke

Yeah, I'm actually thinking a Leaf or a Volt or something like the Elio would be fine for one of our vehicles. Now that she's had the experience of driving a relatively large car, I'm not going to talk Charlene out of the size of the Jetta wagon, but if I just acknowledge that I'm going to end up renting a truck for certain things then maybe I could go electric...

#Comment Re: Replacing the truck made: 2016-01-20 18:28:59.327493+00 by: Larry Burton

Maybe you could do with something like an ELF for commuting with a trailer hitch and a utility trailer for the Jetta wagon to get things like those building supplies and mulch back to your house.

Add your own comment:

(If anyone ever actually uses Webmention/indie-action to post here, please email me)




Format with:

(You should probably use "Text" mode: URLs will be mostly recognized and linked, _underscore quoted_ text is looked up in a glossary, _underscore quoted_ (http://xyz.pdq) becomes a link, without the link in the parenthesis it becomes a <cite> tag. All <cite>ed text will point to the Flutterby knowledge base. Two enters (ie: a blank line) gets you a new paragraph, special treatment for paragraphs that are manually indented or start with "#" (as in "#include" or "#!/usr/bin/perl"), "/* " or ">" (as in a quoted message) or look like lists, or within a paragraph you can use a number of HTML tags:

p, img, br, hr, a, sub, sup, tt, i, b, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, cite, em, strong, code, samp, kbd, pre, blockquote, address, ol, dl, ul, dt, dd, li, dir, menu, table, tr, td, th

Comment policy

We will not edit your comments. However, we may delete your comments, or cause them to be hidden behind another link, if we feel they detract from the conversation. Commercial plugs are fine, if they are relevant to the conversation, and if you don't try to pretend to be a consumer. Annoying endorsements will be deleted if you're lucky, if you're not a whole bunch of people smarter and more articulate than you will ridicule you, and we will leave such ridicule in place.

Flutterby™ is a trademark claimed by

Dan Lyke
for the web publications at www.flutterby.com and www.flutterby.net.