jamesm48•12d agoProlific Poster

Hit 50,000 miles on my truck this week and it got me thinking about carbon footprints

I just rolled over 50,000 miles on my F-150 last Tuesday. That's a lot of gas burned no matter how you cut it. On one hand I need the truck for hauling equipment for landscaping jobs, but on the other hand I can't ignore the emissions. Is personal necessity a valid excuse when we're all trying to cut back, or should I be looking harder at an electric work truck? Genuinely curious what others in the trades are doing.

3 comments

3 Comments

margaret_gonzalez259d ago

Actually, sam_murphy39, 50k miles being low depends on the truck's age. My old Chevy Silverado hit 60k in three years just doing weekend trips to Home Depot and hauling dirt for my wife's garden. But the "average" argument always makes me chuckle because nobody drives average. My neighbor has a 2018 Tacoma with 12k miles because he works from home, but the guy two streets over puts 30k a year on his Ram commuting to a construction site. So the bigger thing to me is that 50,000 miles of gas in an F-150 versus a compact car is way more emissions per mile. If you're only doing jobs within town, maybe an electric work truck makes sense for short hauls. But if you're driving 50 miles to a job site, you're stuck with gas until battery range gets better for heavy loads. I think it's a tradeoff most of us just have to live with right now.

sam_murphy3912d ago

50k miles isn't that much, pretty sure the average is higher.

morgan.logan12d ago

Actually, the average mileage per year in the US is closer to 14,000 miles, so 50k total is probably on the low side for a 5-6 year old car. I think people often overestimate how much they actually drive versus what the averages show. My own driving dropped way off after I started working from home, and I'm pretty sure that's true for a lot of folks.