What Is Your Average Fuel Mileage

[JohnO]

Averaging about 16 on my daily commute, about 60% highway, 40% city.

On the road:

@75: 17-17.5
@65: 18.5-19
@55: 20-21

Box stock 06 F350, crew cab, dually rear. Stock rugged trail tires.

That's with no load. Put about 1.5 tons of cut red oak in the back, I lost about 1 -1.5mpg on the road, running 65 on the way home.

I must stress - your driving style has a great effect upon the mileage, much more so with a heavy diesel truck than a car. Back in the cheap fuel days, when I was just rolling around and not paying attention, my avg to work was around 12.5. That's a 25% improvement just by altering driving style.

The big one is starts and stops. Easy starts, never over 10psi boost, and coast whenever possible. If I see a red light 100 yards down the road, I take my foot off the gas now. Half the time, it changes before I get there, the other half, I coast down to about 15mph before braking. Doesn't take a lot of fuel to keep a 4 ton truck moving, but it does take a lot of fuel to get it moving. Also, I changed my commute time to avoid the really serious stop and go traffic. Get there fiften minutes earlier, save a few dollars each way, and the boss thinks I'm a hard worker 'cause I show up early. I figure, driving slower it takes me maybe 3 minutes longer to get there, but I save around $3 in fuel. That's $60/hour for driving a bit slower. Pretty good pay. I don't worry about holding up the other drivers. I'm in a dually F350. What are you going to do about it? Being tailgated by a Honda is like an elephant being tailgated by a chipmunk.

I ran cross checks of actual calcs vs the lie-o-meter, and it was pretty much right. Even if it's off, it's still useful in telling you if changes in driving style are making a difference.