Oh goodness.
I heard a tidbit on the news today linking the fattening of America to an extra $1 billion in gas burned in our vehicles annually.
I must warn you that if you found my blog while researching the Web for facts on gas consumption for a scholarly piece of work, move on! I didn’t get a firm grip on the “facts” because I was just passing through on the way to the kitchen to eat more food. You know, being a fat American, we eat plenty.
But I did stop my quest for dinner long enough to stand in front of the TV and laugh.
How could someone possibly link such an insignificant gain in use of fuel in America to the weight of the drivers? After all, $1 billion dollars is penny anty.
Logic? Were they using logic? Was their logic based on the notion that vehicles carrying heavier loads use more gas? Had to be. If so, it does make sense that the skinnier the driver, the better gas mileage their car will get. I figure they can't have facts to back this up because no “study” could possibly factor in every variable that would determine what fuel usage per vehicle contents and extrapolate fuel cost to anything reliable.
It had to be a fat-phobic skinny person’s logic that came to the conclusion that prompted this news blurb/story. It couldn’t have been a person that actually thinks things through without blinders would come to that conclusion.
Scenario #1, if you will.
Ten years ago today, a 120-pound woman bought herself a new vehicle that has 312 miles on the engine. Over the last ten years her own fuel consumption has exceeded her fuel burning capacity and that same woman now weighs 170 pounds. As she watched the news tonight she realized that little-by-little her car has gotten worse gas mileage.
Oh wow! Must be because she’s fatter! After all, it couldn’t possibly be her 1996 model that with 114,578 miles on the engine that is the problem.
My ability to think logically can further refute this “study”.
Scenario #2, if you will.
Last Wednesday I went to work with that fat American woman in scenario #1 in my truck. When my truck’s gas tank is filled to the brim, it weighs about 170 pounds. And, to top that off, last Wednesday I went to work with a cup of coffee too, which probably weighed about one pound.
Anyway, I left the house with a full tank of gas, and 171 of cargo. When I got to work and I still had a full tank of gas. The needle hadn’t moved at all. The drive home I was minus the coffee, so the cargo was 170 pounds. Sure enough, I drove up into the driveway and the needle was still past the F-mark. No fuel burned, all day long. I didn’t use a drop of gas!
This Wednesday I left the house with the weight equivalent of a small child in my gas tank, and no coffee. I estimate this means I had about ninety pounds less cargo than a week ago. When I left the truck was on a third of a tank. When I got home it is well below the quarter mark. The needle moved so much I could almost watch it. I used all kinds of gas and had much less cargo!
There you have it. The proof you need that that extra bag of potato chips you ate this morning won't increase your spending at the gas pump anytime soon.
Okay, so I know that a loaded-down semi tractor trailer gets worse gas mileage than an empty tractor trailer. But even with vehicles that regularly haul tens of thousands of extra pounds, the driving conditions need to be taken into consideration when calculating fuel use. As I type, I can hear the big rigs on I-80. I can hear the engines whining as they start the next foothill on the way up to the California border. When I hear the engines whining, they’re guzzling the gas. Ah, there, I just heard some air brakes. That truck is coming out of California, and only needs to keep the engine on to keep the brakes functioning properly. But after they leave the Sierra Nevadas, the run to Salt Lake City, Utah is pretty much five hundred miles of flat road. The Bonneville Salt Flats are so wide and so flat can't even see the darned horizon. Seems to me that fifty miles is a lot more economical than the fifty miles through the Sierra Nevadas, even counting the downhill coasts.
By the way, I think that real reason we’re using more gas in the United States is because we have more trucks on the road. No facts to back that up. Just paying attention. Am I the only person that has noticed that every major trucking company is advertising for drivers? That isn’t because all drivers are quitting in record numbers. It is because there are more trucks on the road and they need more drivers.
And a real life example that occupant weight doesn't matter...
Scenario #3.
Last year this time I was working at Amazon.com, which is about 100 miles round trip on open road. No matter who I had in the truck. 4 trips back and forth to work, and then a trip to the gas station. One month I drove with my brother and he weighs over 200 pounds (he isn't fat, like the man from Brussells, he's six-foot-four and full of muscles). One month I was on another shift and drove alone. One month I had a third skinny little guy with us in the truck.
My life was repetitive. It didn't matter who I had in the truck with me. 400 miles. Trip to the gas station. The MPG (and I was keeping track to charge the car poolers) and cost would vary insignificantly - by pennies - while the cargo weight in the truck was fluctuating from 300-500 pounds depending on if I had 2 passengers and a full tank, or no passengers and an empty tank.
Oh, and by the way...
My truck is nearly 5 years' old and still gets and ALWAYS has gotten better gas mileage than the sticker in the window said it would.
Come on now!
There are just too many variables to figure out gas mileage the average American driver uses and compare it to gas used in the country.
I’ll end this super long post with a scary loaded-vehicle-needing-more-gas story. This is a story about when weight in a vehicle matters!
I was once on a 737 in Southeast Alaska that was delayed because they were taking off cargo they hadn’t originally intended on carrying. The pilot got on the intercom and told us the extra cargo meant they didn’t have the fuel to make Seattle and they wanted to stay on schedule so dumping the cargo rather than taking on more fuel would save time.
Since these planes can fly from Seattle to Anchorage without refueling, I was thinking, they’re carrying so little fuel right now that the a few extra boxes of frozen fish is going to mean we were in danger of falling out of the sky over the Space Needle? That is when I actually asked the attendant ... what about contingency plans? She told me, she was sure they had contingency plans.
Like hell they did! They’d all but admitted we were flying on fumes to a town regularly shroweded in fog? I’ve always had the “what if” writing skill down when it aids in my ability to panic on airplanes. What if we get down there and we can’t land? What if it is foggy. Twice in my lifetime SEA-TAC was a lost cause and the plane I was on overshot for PDX. Twice in my lifetime!!! What if we run into a head wind? What if there is an earthquake or tsunamis and we have to head inland to Boise, Idaho!
I did not get off the plane, but I never forgot the relief of landing in Seattle.
The fog was thicker than pea soup too.
Soup!
I think I'll go have a snack before calling it a night.
Even if it costs me an extra penny to get to work tomorrow while my truck burns it off for me.
I heard a tidbit on the news today linking the fattening of America to an extra $1 billion in gas burned in our vehicles annually.
I must warn you that if you found my blog while researching the Web for facts on gas consumption for a scholarly piece of work, move on! I didn’t get a firm grip on the “facts” because I was just passing through on the way to the kitchen to eat more food. You know, being a fat American, we eat plenty.
But I did stop my quest for dinner long enough to stand in front of the TV and laugh.
How could someone possibly link such an insignificant gain in use of fuel in America to the weight of the drivers? After all, $1 billion dollars is penny anty.
Logic? Were they using logic? Was their logic based on the notion that vehicles carrying heavier loads use more gas? Had to be. If so, it does make sense that the skinnier the driver, the better gas mileage their car will get. I figure they can't have facts to back this up because no “study” could possibly factor in every variable that would determine what fuel usage per vehicle contents and extrapolate fuel cost to anything reliable.
It had to be a fat-phobic skinny person’s logic that came to the conclusion that prompted this news blurb/story. It couldn’t have been a person that actually thinks things through without blinders would come to that conclusion.
Scenario #1, if you will.
Ten years ago today, a 120-pound woman bought herself a new vehicle that has 312 miles on the engine. Over the last ten years her own fuel consumption has exceeded her fuel burning capacity and that same woman now weighs 170 pounds. As she watched the news tonight she realized that little-by-little her car has gotten worse gas mileage.
Oh wow! Must be because she’s fatter! After all, it couldn’t possibly be her 1996 model that with 114,578 miles on the engine that is the problem.
My ability to think logically can further refute this “study”.
Scenario #2, if you will.
Last Wednesday I went to work with that fat American woman in scenario #1 in my truck. When my truck’s gas tank is filled to the brim, it weighs about 170 pounds. And, to top that off, last Wednesday I went to work with a cup of coffee too, which probably weighed about one pound.
Anyway, I left the house with a full tank of gas, and 171 of cargo. When I got to work and I still had a full tank of gas. The needle hadn’t moved at all. The drive home I was minus the coffee, so the cargo was 170 pounds. Sure enough, I drove up into the driveway and the needle was still past the F-mark. No fuel burned, all day long. I didn’t use a drop of gas!
This Wednesday I left the house with the weight equivalent of a small child in my gas tank, and no coffee. I estimate this means I had about ninety pounds less cargo than a week ago. When I left the truck was on a third of a tank. When I got home it is well below the quarter mark. The needle moved so much I could almost watch it. I used all kinds of gas and had much less cargo!
There you have it. The proof you need that that extra bag of potato chips you ate this morning won't increase your spending at the gas pump anytime soon.
Okay, so I know that a loaded-down semi tractor trailer gets worse gas mileage than an empty tractor trailer. But even with vehicles that regularly haul tens of thousands of extra pounds, the driving conditions need to be taken into consideration when calculating fuel use. As I type, I can hear the big rigs on I-80. I can hear the engines whining as they start the next foothill on the way up to the California border. When I hear the engines whining, they’re guzzling the gas. Ah, there, I just heard some air brakes. That truck is coming out of California, and only needs to keep the engine on to keep the brakes functioning properly. But after they leave the Sierra Nevadas, the run to Salt Lake City, Utah is pretty much five hundred miles of flat road. The Bonneville Salt Flats are so wide and so flat can't even see the darned horizon. Seems to me that fifty miles is a lot more economical than the fifty miles through the Sierra Nevadas, even counting the downhill coasts.
By the way, I think that real reason we’re using more gas in the United States is because we have more trucks on the road. No facts to back that up. Just paying attention. Am I the only person that has noticed that every major trucking company is advertising for drivers? That isn’t because all drivers are quitting in record numbers. It is because there are more trucks on the road and they need more drivers.
And a real life example that occupant weight doesn't matter...
Scenario #3.
Last year this time I was working at Amazon.com, which is about 100 miles round trip on open road. No matter who I had in the truck. 4 trips back and forth to work, and then a trip to the gas station. One month I drove with my brother and he weighs over 200 pounds (he isn't fat, like the man from Brussells, he's six-foot-four and full of muscles). One month I was on another shift and drove alone. One month I had a third skinny little guy with us in the truck.
My life was repetitive. It didn't matter who I had in the truck with me. 400 miles. Trip to the gas station. The MPG (and I was keeping track to charge the car poolers) and cost would vary insignificantly - by pennies - while the cargo weight in the truck was fluctuating from 300-500 pounds depending on if I had 2 passengers and a full tank, or no passengers and an empty tank.
Oh, and by the way...
My truck is nearly 5 years' old and still gets and ALWAYS has gotten better gas mileage than the sticker in the window said it would.
Come on now!
There are just too many variables to figure out gas mileage the average American driver uses and compare it to gas used in the country.
I’ll end this super long post with a scary loaded-vehicle-needing-more-gas story. This is a story about when weight in a vehicle matters!
I was once on a 737 in Southeast Alaska that was delayed because they were taking off cargo they hadn’t originally intended on carrying. The pilot got on the intercom and told us the extra cargo meant they didn’t have the fuel to make Seattle and they wanted to stay on schedule so dumping the cargo rather than taking on more fuel would save time.
Since these planes can fly from Seattle to Anchorage without refueling, I was thinking, they’re carrying so little fuel right now that the a few extra boxes of frozen fish is going to mean we were in danger of falling out of the sky over the Space Needle? That is when I actually asked the attendant ... what about contingency plans? She told me, she was sure they had contingency plans.
Like hell they did! They’d all but admitted we were flying on fumes to a town regularly shroweded in fog? I’ve always had the “what if” writing skill down when it aids in my ability to panic on airplanes. What if we get down there and we can’t land? What if it is foggy. Twice in my lifetime SEA-TAC was a lost cause and the plane I was on overshot for PDX. Twice in my lifetime!!! What if we run into a head wind? What if there is an earthquake or tsunamis and we have to head inland to Boise, Idaho!
I did not get off the plane, but I never forgot the relief of landing in Seattle.
The fog was thicker than pea soup too.
Soup!
I think I'll go have a snack before calling it a night.
Even if it costs me an extra penny to get to work tomorrow while my truck burns it off for me.
LOL
ReplyDeleteWow. Yea, I can see your point. Sometimes, the media just says things because they want to try and make sense of stuff, without pointing the blame at big shot corporations.
But you definitely hit the nail on the head. Love your case study. lol Scenarios are a good way to set the stage. ;)
:) Thanks for the smile, Annalee!
My local radio guys were having a field day with this one :)
ReplyDeleteI had to laugh about their logic. One, how do they prove it and 2) come on now...lol
ReplyDeletecontingency plans....those are good to have, especially when you're flying around in soup waiting for a cracker to land on!