Road Trip 2010: Fuel by the Numbersand more

I spent some time with my friend, Microsoft Excel, last night putting together the numbers from our recent trip. My records were nearly intact since I carefully record every gasoline purchase with location of fill-up, price per gallon (or liter, as the case may be)number of gallons (or liters), miles driven since last fill-up, and the miles per gallon for that tank of fuel. I say "nearly intact" because I forgot to enter the name of one town and the total cost for the fill-up in another. That's more than close enough for government work.

Since some of the gas was purchased in Canada and those folks measure in liters, I had to convert the number of liters into gallons. (BTW, there's 3.784 liters in a gallon. One quart equals 0.964 liters. It's right there on your milk carton. One liter equals 1.06 quarts. That's on you soda bottle.)

And, since some of the gas was purchased in Canada it was paid for with Canadian cash which was nearly but not quite the same value as the USD. For practical purposes, I've assumed they traded at par over the course of our trip with the differences on either side balancing out over time. In reality, the two did a delicate little dance about that value, with each having the upper hand by a few pennies at one time or another. Usually the value depended upon what was happening in the Canadian elections, who said what to whom in the US, how folks felt about their teams chances for the Grey Cup or some such nonsense. Lets just call them equal for now.

Any how, our trip covered 75 days from June 9th to August 22. I filled the tank before we left and did so again when we came back.
Total distance traveled was 12,238 miles.
The Tundra burned a total of 1334.75 gallons of regular gasoline with an average cost of $3.05 per gallon.
(The price was highly inflated by the average of $4.32 per gallon paid in Canada and the average of $3.73 per gallon paid in Alaska. The rest of the USA we averaged $2.75 per gallon--and that includes the $3+ paid for five fill-ups in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. [Idaho? It was Mountain Home. Oh.])
The cheapest gas was in Columbia, MO at $2.40 per gallon.
The most expensive was the $1.84 per LITER paid at Muncho Lake, BC. That works out to $9.77 per gallon. And that's Canadian. Sure am glad I only took enough to get to Toad River! Where it was "only" $1.36 per liter!

Those of you who have your calculators out will easily see that we averaged 9.4 miles per gallon. Not great you say? Remember that the Tundra was hauling a trailer with a gross vehicle weight of 7500 pounds for much of the time. only one or two days was the Tundra in use when it did not have the trailer attached long enough to require a tank of gas. In Colorado Springs, for instance, we got 18.6 mpg when going over the mountains to South Park for ballooning. Our total cost for fuel alone came out to approximately $0.37 per mile.

The Tundra took a couple of lumps. There area few paint chips here and there and, while we almost made it without a ding in the windshield, we did get one the size and shape of a nickel when passing through a construction zone on the east side of Boise, Idaho. It's just about an inch inside the passenger side of the truck and if you didn't know where to look.... There's probably an epoxy that can be applied to it to prevent spreading. If not...Hey! This is PA! Lots of cars and trucks on the road with cracks from side to side. And the insurance companies aren't reluctant to pay for the damaged windshield or two.

Then there's the trailer: It needed realignment in Edmonton. It needs a new slide out motor now. But it survived the bumps and thumps along the way pretty well. No flat tires. Only a few pieces of gravel slung up to ding the siding--and most of those were from the Tundra despite the mud flaps. It still needs a good cleaning inside and out, but it has been very, very good to us.