Jun 7th, 2008
The 5% Plan: Not Quite There
Many of you will recall that I spent last week trying to reduce my baseline gasoline use from 10.5 gallons to 9.98 gallons. I calculated for that to be the case I’d need to drive 247.7 miles or less and maintain my mileage at 24.82 miles per gallon, which, through the years I’ve owned this truck as well as from its initial EPA standards, seemed a bit high for mileage. Let’s see how I did.
For the week ending May 31, 2008, I ended up driving 249.1 miles, 1.4 miles more than my goal. My estimated miles per gallon figure was 24.33, so my total gas used was 10.24 gallons, only about 2.5% less than my baseline.
What did I do that worked and will try to keep doing? One of the things I did was keep my errands in my little town to a minimum and took my bicycle once to the temple (just a little over two miles round trip). As long as I don’t need to carry a large load (meaning as long as I can fit what I need in my backpack) I’ll keep doing this for short trips.
What did I do that didn’t work and what do I change from here? Well, one of the things I did was change the route I took to work. I thought it might be a bit longer, but save me on mileage with a hair less traffic. However, it doesn’t appear that helped, so this week I’ve gone back to my old route. I’m also considering having one weekend day every two weeks be a total “no driving” day. That could be this Sunday.
We’ll see how it goes in week number two.
[...] continuing to see what I can do to reduce my gas usage by 5%. In my first week of trying to cut my fuel use, I cut my mileage almost 5%, but my fuel use reduction…. This week I went back to my original route to work, although I did have one social outing in [...]