Cost Analysis

Lately I’ve gotten into a cost analysis mode on my transportation needs. Here’s what I have been doing every weekday...

I top off my tank every weekday at the QT on 32^nd Street and Indian School, I check my trip odometer and I reset my trip odometer. I do the same thing the next day. I’ve been doing this for about a month now and from this information I have been able to do a cost analysis on how much it costs me to get to work and back.

This morning gas at my favorite QT was $3.999 (you got to be freakin’ kidding me). I had driven 75.3 miles since yesterday morning. My 2006 Toyota Tacoma consumed 3.966 gallons of gas costing me $15.86. My truck’s miles per gallon came up to be 18.986 mpg.

Let’s just say gas stays at $4 a gallon. Lets increase my miles per day to include trips to the church and the store – say 80 miles a day. Let’s just say my truck was getting 19 mpg. There are about 260 business days a year. I would consume 4.214 gallons of gas for each of these 260 business days. This would be 1095.5 gallons of gas a year. My gas costs would be $4382 per year.

My friend drives truck for a living. Diesel is $4.619 (it may be more) a gallon at the QT on 51^st and the I-10. His truck’s two tanks hold a total of 300 gallons. It costs him $1385.70 to fill up. He must add these costs to the cost of load of what he’s hauling. This is the reason everything is more expensive at your local WalMart, Frys or Safeway. Everything we buy comes to us by truck.

Let me be frank – the price of fuel is screwing every American: young or old; black or white; male of female; legal or illegal. I echo what I’ve heard from talk radio recently: if I was running for president, gas prices and how to fix them would be the only thing I would be talking about.