Today’s tip will probably come as a surprise to most of you, but will be especially useful for those of you who drive trucks.
Driving with your tailgate down doesn’t help you save gas.
I’ll be the first to admit, I bought into the notion that by having your truck’s tailgate down while you’re driving down the road (especially the highway) you would greatly increase your truck’s fuel economy. Apparently that just isn’t true.
According to several sites (Ask Yahoo! for example) state that you get roughly the same gas mileage driving with your tailgate up as you do when your tailgate is down.
According to the Ask Yahoo! article, this is the reason why:
“When the tailgate is raised, a “separated bubble” of stagnant air is formed in the bed of the pickup. Wind tends to swoosh over this bubble as though it were part of the truck. Lower the tailgate, and the bubble disappears, which leads to increased wind resistance.”
So, get rid of that net you used to replace your tailgate and go ahead and drive around with your tailgate up!
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This has to be the same guy using different names, there can’t possibly be this many effeminate truck drivers in the U.S. that are more concerned about spelling and less about the issue of saving gas. Sean… close your laptop, walk out of Starbucks, get in your Volkswagon Beetle, drive it off the nearest cliff.
I would like to see a test, (no reality shows or college student theorems), just 2 identical trucks running side-by-side down I-95, one tailgate up and the other down. It would have to be operated and documented by a respectable source. Probably the only way this debate would be settled.
You have to be the same guy using different names, I find it hard to believe that there are so many effeminate truck drivers in the U.S. that are more concerned about spelling than the issue of saving gas. Sean… close your laptop, walk out of Starbucks, get in your Volkswagon Beetle, drive off the nearest cliff.
I would like to see a test (no reality shows or college student theorems), with 2 identical trucks driving down I-95 side-by-side from Virginia to Florida, one tailgate up and the other down. This would have to be operated and documented by a respectable source.. but that should settle the debate for those that rely on what they read instead of personal experience.
No MK896, I just hate to see the English language morph into an unintelligible jumble of malapropisms and newly minted verbs that are really nouns. I don’t drive a VW (Chevy Colorado), don’t go to Starbucks (Peet’s) and don’t own a laptop. Getting back to the point of this commentary, I am in the tailgate up camp, but I don’t need to slam people who disagree with me. You are right, someone reputable should do a real world comparison test and perhaps put an end to the debate once and for all.
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