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Cost of diesel in the US is hilariously out of control. It’s far cheaper to drive gasoline
by pcurve 4y ago
Cost of diesel in the US is hilariously out of control. It’s far cheaper to drive gasoline
- Ancapistani 4y agoTell me about it. My spouse's vehicle was down for the past two months, and they've been driving an F350 Super Duty. It was >$175 to fill up.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bamboozled 4y agoI’ll get hammered for this, but why do people own cars like that, why on earth would people need a F350 super duty ? What practical purpose would it serve ? The climate is breaking down and people are cruising around in trucks like that? I don’t know…
- fragmede 4y agoAcual farm usage. off-road moving of landscaping materials and tools. pulling horse or sheep or pig trailers. or boats. there are actual legitimate reasons to own such a beast but of course not everyone that owns it uses it for that purpose so accusations that the user "doesn't really need one" are rife. but that's capitalism for ya.
- reustle 4y agoI grew up in a pretty rural part of the US and while those use cases were absolutely common for a decent percentage of large truck owners, they only used them for those purposes about 5-10% of the time. The more reasonable folks had a small simple car for their daily driver, and weren't worried about using their big truck as a status symbol.
- gruez 4y ago>they only used them for those purposes about 5-10% of the time. "5-10%" works out to once every 1-2 weeks. That seems like a pretty good reason to have such a truck, considering that if you actually needed it it would be a huge hassle to rent one. I haven't done the math on this, but I imagine that if you used it even once every 3-4 weeks you'd come out ahead on time/money.
- dsfyu404ed 4y agoHow much ass does the second row of your average sedan see? I'd be surprised if it's even 5-10% of trips. Never-mind that if they were using the vehicle (sedan, pickup or otherwise) right up to the limit of it's capacity the majority of the time many here would be hand wringing about how they really should be using something with more spare capacity. This is fundamentally a societal expectations problem. People expect you to have more vehicle than you need. If you are maxing out what you have regularly you are "doing it wrong".
- deltarholamda 4y ago>they only used them for those purposes about 5-10% While true, when you need them, there is no substitute. So the answer is to have two vehicles, which may not be economically viable. Also, everybody has really strong opinions on the legitimacy of owning a truck until they need help moving.
- acdha 4y agoThere's a certain logic for that but buying a luxury truck means you're paying a LOT more — like enough to buy one or even two additional new cars for every trip you don't need a truck for — and you're paying for a bunch of expensive stuff which is less durable for the times when you do need to use it as a work truck. If I'm moving, I can rent a truck from Home Depot which has a considerably larger bed for well under one percent of the extra cost of buying a super-sized truck. If I move less frequently than every day for a year, I'm still ahead by tens of thousands of dollars even before you consider how much extra I'd be paying to burn more fuel, which costs more per gallon, for every trip where I'm not doing something which needs that much towing capacity. You can pay a moving company to move your stuff multiple times a year, save tens of thousands of dollars, and not even have to pack your stuff.
- rektide 4y agoRight now there aren't great alternatives, but I'd stress that the full ownership model of a $100k+ fuel-gulping mini-monster-truck that has specific beast-of-burden uses like this is in 95% of cases nonsense. If these owners really make use of these vehicles to any extent >12 times a year, I tend to believe they are far above average users. Ideally there'd be better systems for outright collective ownership, that would make sense & have some safeguards against potentially less than good co-owners. Alas most collective ownership propositions come with a tragedy of the commons, an inability to assess who are the good & bad players & ways for the good to hold.
- iancmceachern 4y agoI agree, my wife and I are one of these super users. We ironically have a diesel f250, we live in San Francisco and I bike or take public transportation for nearly all my day to day travel needs, as well as my commute to work. As soon as we find an electric or alternative fuel truck that meets our needs (tow ~10k lbs ~400 miles in a day) we will switch to it.
- acdha 4y agoWe drove around a number of rural areas over the summer and the distinction was striking: the $80k vanity trucks were in the rich suburbs where rancher cosplay is popular, and you never saw one with more cargo than a Honda Fit could handle. Out in WV, western MD or PA we saw noticeably more small efficient cars, vans, and work trucks which were clearly treated like cattle & used until they couldn’t do the job.
- iancmceachern 4y agoDoesn't track with my experience. In California, Colorado, Wyoming, Arizona, Nevada, New mexico and of course Texas big 3 full size trucks are what gets it done for folks.
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago>why do people own cars like that, why on earth would people need a F350 super duty ? What practical purpose would it serve ? Same practical purpose as all the 4Runners that HNers with 2-kid households own, fulfilling societal expectations for amount of excess vehicle that is required at that point on the socio-economic ladder.
- rootusrootus 4y agoHumans sure are judgemental creatures. Especially from the safety of their keyboard, where they are not subject to anyone else checking them for hypocrisy. Perhaps we could be a little more realistic and assume that the majority of people just buy what they need.
- rootusrootus 4y ago> I’ll get hammered for this, but why do people own cars like that, why on earth would people need a F350 super duty ? What practical purpose would it serve ? The only reason you'd get hammered for that question is the implicit assumption that nobody who owns an HD truck needs it. You might see me drive to the store once in a while in my F250. So you'd probably wonder why I needed such a massive gas guzzling grocery getter? Well, because that day my wife took the Bolt and I had no other option. People fall for this fallacy all the time, assuming that if you see someone underutilizing their truck, they must always be underutilizing it. But I only drive mine a thousand miles a year, and except for rare occasions only when a travel tailer is attached behind it. The rest of the time we drive my wife's Bolt, and I'll wager that my average fuel consumption is lower than most people who only have an economy car.
- iancmceachern 4y agoMe too! I love seeing a fellow RVer here on HN, pretty small overlap between the two I expect. In also live in SF.
- chrisseaton 4y ago> I had no other option Buy a smaller car? Walk?
- ls15 4y agoBoth of these don't tow the trailer.
- Fatnino 4y agoTrucks do have a use sometimes, and some people keep a truck on standby while using a more efficient car most of the time. With that set up a situation can arise where the one efficient car is in use while the other driver needs to be somewhere. It is completely irrational to expect them to maintain a 3rd vehicle for this rare case.
- Ancapistani 4y ago> Buy a smaller car? So your solution to the incremental pollution caused by driving “too much vehicle”… is to mine, refine, and manufacture a second vehicle?
- animitronix 4y agoI remember the same question being asked about Escalades 20 years ago. Nothing changes.
- poopnugget 4y ago
- Ancapistani 4y agoIt’s a farm truck, mostly. A truck of that size is absolutely necessary when you’re hauling a flatbed trailer full of hay or livestock. Because we’re able to afford multiple vehicles, it spends most of its life sitting in my parents’ driveway. They drive it once a month or so to avoid the issues that come with a vehicle not being used at all, but otherwise it makes little sense to drive it when both I and my parents have more efficient vehicle for day-to-day stuff. Honestly, I understand what you’re getting at, but it’s a matter of perspective. Both I and my dad keep a current Class A CDL so we can drive that truck with a loaded trailer. When we need it, the alternative is hiring a semi - and it’s significantly both less expensive and less polluting per mile than a semi tractor.
- Gigachad 4y agoThese kinds of vehicles should be treated like tractors. Very limited road access. You shouldn’t be able to drive to Walmart in one.
- garciasn 4y agoIf someone wants to spend the money to buy one and pay the $200 to fill it up, so be it. If they think it’s somehow less money to buy a $80K truck than to rent a truck once a year, cool. But to say it should somehow not be allowed on the road is absurd.
- Gigachad 4y agoHow exactly should they be paying for the increased risk to peoples safety and the extra air pollution they create. Should we be calculating the number of years they took off people lives due to the particulate pollution? If they have an accident and kill someone, should that be punished more harshly than regular since they chose to pick a more dangerous form of transport?
- gort19 4y ago> If they have an accident and kill someone, should that be punished more harshly than regular since they chose to pick a more dangerous form of transport? By this logic, every vehicle would have a different punishment associated with it.
- iancmceachern 4y agoIt's no different than a Range Rover, a Bentley, a Ferrari, heck even. M3. MY f250 diesel gets better milage than my neighbors M3, and it saves the climate in many ways compared to his M3. If yoi compare an average M3 owner who Flys for work or vacation every 4 months to me, who has a Diesel f250 that is driven only to tow a travel trailer RV which we use every few months for work/pleasure travel, along with the relative carbon usage for say a hotel and all its laundry vs. staying in my RV I believe it's a wash.