It’s amazing how quickly your car or truck can become cluttered with useless items that do nothing but take up space and add weight to your vehicle.
Clean out your car!
From what I’ve read, the fuel of thumb is: For every extra 100 pounds you carry in your vehicle, you reduce gas mileage and fuel economy by roughly 2%.
To give you a real life example of how easy it is to “overcome” this, I’ll share my experience.
This past weekend I cleaned out just the trunk of my car and removed the following items:
- Golf clubs and golf shoes – 18 lbs
- Two large CD cases – 20 lbs
- Five library books – 6 lbs
By simply taking these items out of the trunk of my car, I reduced my car’s weight by 44 pounds, which should improve my gas mileage and fuel economy by about .88%.
While that certainly doesn’t seem like much, it all adds up, especially when coupled with some other fuel economy tips that you can get from this site.
You mention weight. Do you only fill up to 1/2 or 1/4 a tank at the pump in order to save on fuel weight? I mean you shouldn’t waste gas to haul around other gas right?
1 gallon of gasoline equals 5.8 to 6.5 lbs. So if you fill up to a full tank (10 gallons) the avg weight of the tank is more than 60 something lbs concidering that you don’t go down to zero. Filling it up to only have full yeilds a avg fuel weight of 30 lbs. filling to only a quater tank yield a weight savings of 45+ lbs but then you run the risk of running out of gas.
That decrease in AVG weight of carried fuel is almost as much as the weight you saved cleaning out your car.
just an observation. You’re doing good work. fell free to use this in a blog later if you like.
Thanks for the question/comment. To be honest, I just fill up my tank all the way each time. I figure with having to take extra tips to the gas station (meaning I’d have to use gas simply to put gas in) that the total savings between filling up and filling a quarter or half tank are pretty much a wash.
Thanks for your comments regarding the site, hopefully the tips are of use to you.
some of your tips are helpful to me some aren’t. You’re still doing good stuff here regardless.
You said you’d make more trips to the gas station and that’d be just as wastful. Aren’t you filling up on the way somewhere.
Don’t tell me you make a separate trip, or go out of your way, to get gas. Seems to defeat the whole thing you have going here.
sorry the above was me as well, forgot to add the name.
You’re right, typically I do fill up my tank when I’m already out, but there have been times when I’ve forgotten to fill up and have had to make an additional tip. Oops!
For those of us who live in areas where temperatures swing wildly (especially in the winter), it’s worth noting that leaving your tank half-empty on a regular basis invites condensation to form in your gas tank, resulting in water in your fuel line. This can cause sub-par performance, engine damage, and a car that won’t run once the condensation gets too bad (ie, it’s trying to burn water).
When getting gas you shouldn’t, as a constant continue to fill 1/2 or 1/4 of the way as this causes many vehicles to prematurely wear the fuel pump. If your pump is in the tank, most are these days, you should fill up every time if possible, by doing this you will prolong the life of your pump. Just some food for thought, your pump in the long run will cost you more than the couple of gallons you might save by having less weight.
2 large cd cases weighs more than five books??
Mo’ Fo’ loves music and probably had 1000 cds like I do. Weighs a lot.
Seems to defeat the whole thing you have going here.