How much does the big truck cost to drive in fuel? ⛽

With gas prices going up, I’ve been thinking more about the fuel costs of a big ol’ SuperDuty gasser truck. It seems like the internet consensus is you’ll get around 15½ miles per gallon, though much lower if idle, off-road or drive in the city a lot, as big block pushrod engines guzzle gas doing all of those things due to pumping loses in the engine. Highway driving, moderately gets you maybe 17 or maybe up 19 miles per gallon depending on terrain and how easy you are on the gas pedal.

As the slogan goes, “Smiles Per Gallon, Not Miles Per Gallon” as I saw on one of SuperDuty groups I’m part of on Facebook which either reminds me of every single problem that can go wrong on a big Ford and how truly bad gas millage some people are getting. Plus some people who actually love their trucks. Driving an ginormous SuperDuty ain’t going to be much fun in the city, with parking and getting through traffic with the blind spots, but I mostly plan to use it on trips out on the open road.

Americans with their EPA-style fuel economy comparison unit, the miles per gallon, doesn’t tell you much. You bought ten gallons of fuel. You can go 155 miles. But nobody plans their lives around how far they can go on 10 gallons or even one gallon of fuel. They want to know how much fuel their truck is going to use for their 100 mile trip. At 15½ MPG that works out to be 6.5 gallons of fuel per 100 miles.

If gas costs …

• $3 a gallon, then it’s $19.50 per hundred miles
• $4 a gallon, then it’s $26 per hundred miles
• $5 a gallon, then it’s $32.50 per hundred miles
• $6 a gallon, then it’s $43 per hundred miles

If you’re focusing on smiles per gallon, namely how much it costs to drive an hour at 45 mph …

• $3 a gallon, its $8.78 per hour
• $4 a gallon, its $11.70 per hour
• $5 a gallon, it’s $14.75 per hour
• $6 a gallon, it’s a $17.70 per hour

Obviously, $6 a gallon gas is twice as expensive as $3 gallon. For a recreational trip, by definition, the trip is optional, so it’s pretty easy to calculate the likely fuel cost of any trip. So you have a set cost, and you can fit it into your budget, or not take the trip. Paying for gas for recreational driving isn’t mandatory if you don’t take trip.

Maybe these days that I make good money and are pretty frugal in most parts of my life, I am less concerned about the cost of gas. Or when i break down the cost per hundred miles of intentional driving to a recreational destination it shows what a trifling number it is. Obviously, if I was planning to drive 10,000 miles a year, it does add up at $6 gallon – a fairly steep $4,300 – but I don’t plan to do that many miles anytime soon, using my bike and city bus mostly around town. I think last year I barely put 6,000 miles on Big Red. I also doubt such high gas prices are sustainable for long, as people, myself included refrain from driving.

I know I am making excuses in my own mind for the ginormous truck that gets bad gas mileage as gas prices soar as the Middle East blows up. Still, numbers seems more reasonable when I keep it in context.