bman

So my neighbor tells me yesterday he's going to trade his 04 Dodge truck in on a smaller more fuel efficient pickup. He works construction and carries a lot of tools around to and from jobsites. He wants to save some money. His truck is now paid off. I asked him how many miles he drives each year and he's averaging 16,000 miles or just over 1300 miles per month. His truck gets 14mpg now. The best fuel mileage we could find in a pickup truck was 25mpg, at a cost of just over $35,000. So now he's using about 90 gallons a month at 4.00/gal for a $360.00 fuel bill and no truck payment. He wants to buy the new truck so he will only use 52 gallons a month at 4.00/gal for a $208.00 fuel bill. He thought that was pretty good until he realized that his truck payment is just over $550.00/month for the next 4 years, plus his insurance increase for the new vehicle. For this new truck to even be break-even for his budget he'd have to be driving 2x his current monthly mileage.

Going green is going to take some time.