Saving the earth
I get about 15 miles per gallon in my pickup truck. I cringe each time I need to fill up the tank, at $90 a pop. The truck is massive; a full size Chevy with four doors and a towing package. I feel excessive every time my dog and I run errands in it.
So I mostly don't. I walk or I ride my bike, and if I am driving, I bunch my errands. My husband prefers to commute by bus into the city where he works so he doesn't have to park the whale (or pay for the gas.)
Until recently we have been a three car family with four drivers and each vehicle in our fleet had a different purpose. The Honda Civic coupe got the best gas mileage and was best for commuting into the city, but was somehow invisible to other drivers and was frequently hit by people randomly crashing into it. The pickup truck was best for hauling loads but got terrible gas mileage. The minivan was best for hauling lots of people, but is ancient and potentially unreliable.
Our fleet model worked great when everyone lived nearby. But the older two kids don't anymore. When our daughter got her first job in a suburb of Boston just outside the area covered by subways, we gave her the 12 year old Honda Civic. The twenty year old away at college usually (but not always) has the 16 year old minivan to haul people back and forth to ski slopes and their secondary campus twenty miles away from their principal campus. This left my husband and I with just the 11 year old pickup truck.
We have been intending to buy a new commuter vehicle to replace the one we gave away. We have the money set aside, and we've decided what we want.
But the thing is, we are doing just fine nearly all the time with just the pickup truck. Yes, occasionally we blow through more gas than we would if we had a commuter vehicle, but we put very few miles on our vehicles, and I wonder if the savings in gas would be offset by the resources required for a new vehicle.
Once in a while we get into a bind and wish we had two vehicles. (Four people can share three vehicles easily. Three can share two pretty well. But two sharing one leaves much to be desired.) So, yeah, that decided that: it is time to bite the bullet and get a fuel efficient car.
Then, this week Eldest Son just got himself his first car. He returned the minivan. There. Now we have two vehicles.
The '97 Toyota Previa gets 20 mpg. Not exactly wonderful. But we are going to save the earth and keep driving our ancient, inefficient vehicles.
So I mostly don't. I walk or I ride my bike, and if I am driving, I bunch my errands. My husband prefers to commute by bus into the city where he works so he doesn't have to park the whale (or pay for the gas.)
Until recently we have been a three car family with four drivers and each vehicle in our fleet had a different purpose. The Honda Civic coupe got the best gas mileage and was best for commuting into the city, but was somehow invisible to other drivers and was frequently hit by people randomly crashing into it. The pickup truck was best for hauling loads but got terrible gas mileage. The minivan was best for hauling lots of people, but is ancient and potentially unreliable.
Our fleet model worked great when everyone lived nearby. But the older two kids don't anymore. When our daughter got her first job in a suburb of Boston just outside the area covered by subways, we gave her the 12 year old Honda Civic. The twenty year old away at college usually (but not always) has the 16 year old minivan to haul people back and forth to ski slopes and their secondary campus twenty miles away from their principal campus. This left my husband and I with just the 11 year old pickup truck.
We have been intending to buy a new commuter vehicle to replace the one we gave away. We have the money set aside, and we've decided what we want.
But the thing is, we are doing just fine nearly all the time with just the pickup truck. Yes, occasionally we blow through more gas than we would if we had a commuter vehicle, but we put very few miles on our vehicles, and I wonder if the savings in gas would be offset by the resources required for a new vehicle.
Once in a while we get into a bind and wish we had two vehicles. (Four people can share three vehicles easily. Three can share two pretty well. But two sharing one leaves much to be desired.) So, yeah, that decided that: it is time to bite the bullet and get a fuel efficient car.
Then, this week Eldest Son just got himself his first car. He returned the minivan. There. Now we have two vehicles.
The '97 Toyota Previa gets 20 mpg. Not exactly wonderful. But we are going to save the earth and keep driving our ancient, inefficient vehicles.