Does he really drive 50,000 miles a year?
By adamg - Fri, 05/09/2008 - 8:55am.
The Globe recently profiled some pickup owner who claims he now pays $75 three times a week to fill up. Bill does the math and says the numbers just don't add up:
... Okay, let's say he does pay $75 (three times a week) and his truck averages around 15.5 MPG. He must be driving around 961 miles a week; that's almost 50,000 miles a year. Wow. And it's costing him around $11,000 to do that much driving.
So basically the story from the Boston Globe is that consumers that drive over three times the yearly national average are facing a financial burden. Yep, sounds like NEWS to me. ...
Via Harry.
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Wrong Source
I'm the Bill that made the blog about the Globe's gas guzzler story, there's no Bill Landris.
Fixed, sorry
I saw "billandiris" and came up with that name, instead of stopping to think it might actually mean "Bill and Iris."
Typical Yearly Car Mileage
I went looking at one point, and found that a typical family unit owns two cars and averages 12K to 15K miles per year. I can hunt for it, but it may have changed.
That would put a household yearly average at 24-30K miles.
I checked this out because I wanted to know how my own family stacked up (one 19 month old car with 20K miles).
Then I go and wipe out all our euro-level carbon emission smugness bragging points with all my business travel - I blame society!
Did you even bother to read
Did you even bother to read the Globe story? It just said a pick-up owner complained about "paying $75 to fill his black Dodge Ram pickup truck for the third time in a week." It didn't say the guy filled up three times every week. He may have taken a road trip.
Exactly.
Doesn't say every week. It says this week. That guy looks like he has a Quad cab, a big old engine, and ain't getting anywhere near 15.5 mpg real world. If there's any city driving, or hauling, it will be closer to 10-11 mpg on the good days. Nothing weird about this guy's story at all.
I could only base my
I could only base my conjecture on the photo presented by the globe. The Ram looks fairly new and the 2006 had an average sized tank and mileage for competing years. Now, let's say he's only getting 10 miles to the gallon and his tank is 26 gallons, at three fills ups a week, that still over 40k driven annually.
Of course, the article doesn't state whether or not this was a one time incidident and that he doesn't usually have to fill up so often. Of course the Globe doesn't tell us that. They lead us to believe that this is common, why else would he be so interested in driving the truck.
My major point with my blog was that the guy doesn't represent the average American motorist and the Globes desperate attempt to find an SUV driver in a pinch only turned up this one case which they then portrayed as 'Average Joe American'.
Once again
It's the Glob's journalism model at work:
1. Reach conclusions.
2. Find anecdotes.
3. Take pictures.
FYI
I've got the same truck. Average fuel economy is currently 13.9 mpg, combined highway and local driving, and it's got a 22-gallon tank.
Did you even bother to reply to the right comment?
The central issue with the blog post that Adam linked to was "how typical is this".
I was responding to the blog entry, not the Globe article which the blog commented on.
Unless, of course, you intended to reply to Bill when you replied to me and "you" meant him and not me.
Not *That* Uncommon
My Dad used to drive that kind of mileage a year in a company car as an insurance adjuster. True, he was in a rural state with much longer distances to cover than here, but people do that kind of driving.