Some interesting 12 year truck statistics

[Crunch]

Since I bought the truck new in July 2003, I've kept an event log and created a spread sheet to record all my truck costs, fuel consumption/economy, etc. What's not included are my costs for safety inspections, registration and insurance. Those costs might add another $14K to the total. The MPG stats are cumulative for all kinds of driving--towing, hauling, city, highway, etc. Here are some of those statistics:

TOTAL TRUCK COSTS (including purchase price): $95,842.36
OPERATING COST PER MILE: $0.3672553055
TOTAL GALLONS OF FUEL: 15,050.443
TOTAL MILES PER GALLON: 17.334269378
TOTAL ENGINE HOURS: 6,148

It's kind of a shock to see how much money I've put into the truck. But those costs are somewhat mitigated by the low cost per mile stat over 12 years of operation, and the total fuel economy. It would be nice to get that operating cost down below $0.35/mile by the time the truck runs its last mile.

 

[Prairie Dog]

Wow, talk about spoiling the fun..

I used to keep track of mileage when towing our RV and then I figured, why bother. I'm not getting anything out of all this obsessing.
Now towing is a lot more enjoyable.

 

[EDankievitch]

It must be a long cold winter and we've got too much time on our hands. I once figured out my cost per pound of fish that fish that I caught on my boat. At the time I owned the boat in question about 4 years my really fresh caught today Flounder was down to $950 a pound... Flash forward 20 years and I'm now on boat number 31 ( I buy fix up and sell boats for a hobby and I'm much better at it than fishing... Lol) my cost per pound of fish is probably around $2500 per pound. That said nothing beats my time with family out fishing for the day. And last year my sister caught by far the largest large mouth bass I have ever seen come out of Lake George Just shy of 15 Lbs. That my friends was priceless.

 

[Jim W]

That is very impressive as to what you have posted. I too have a spread sheet and have tracked my cost similar to you. But What I find interesting is my 08 has a slight lower cost per mile than your 03 does as to fuel mileage. Does your cost per mile only include fuel or does this include tire and other maintenance charges also?

My fuel mileage also reflects only a yearly average which includes towing a 5th wheel and mostly city type driving. As of the end of the year 2014; I had 78,592 miles and used 5,926 gallons of diesel at $20,836. I believe this works out to $0.27 a mile in fuel cost and my MPG was 13.26. If you include all maintenance such as tires, oil changes and so forth this will beak down to a cost of $0.33 a mile.

Jim W.

 

[Crunch]

That is very impressive as to what you have posted. I too have a spread sheet and have tracked my cost similar to you. But What I find interesting is my 08 has a slight lower cost per mile than your 03 does as to fuel mileage. Does your cost per mile only include fuel or does this include tire and other maintenance charges also?

My CPM includes everything except regulatory costs such as vehicle registration, insurance and safety inspections. Purchase price, plus every gallon of fuel, oil, filters and even the license plate bulbs are included in the total cost stats. In 261,000 miles I've gone through a few sets of tires (in fact, I just put two Michelin LTX/MS2's on it the other day, after only running LTX/AS tires since I bought it), two Accelerator Pedal Position Sensors (at roughly $700 each) and three hub bearings. It was the first vehicle I bought new, so I figured it might be cool to see what it cost to operate. I'm guessing that my average cost per gallon of fuel is somewhere around $3/gallon, which means that fuel accounts for about 70% of the non purchase price costs, leaving roughly 30% for maintenance, parts and repairs. I've also wondered if there is a correlation between miles driven, engine hours and cumulative average speed. For me that works out to about 42.5 MPH over the life of the truck. I use the truck to operate a power inverter that operates a pump, so there is some significant idling time. I don't know if that's a low operating speed for the miles driven. I'd say 65% of the miles driven are highway miles.