This next tip involves a little bit of planning but saves you time, cuts the amount of money you spend fueling up the car, and reduces your carbon footprint. Stop to think for a minute: How often do you make a quick trip to the store for something you need? How often is that the only place you stop while you’re out? Let’s look at how much time and money you can save by consolidating trips.
Your goal is to batch your trips and make all of your stops in one part of town during a single outing. I’m talking about running errands, taking family members (or yourself) to activities, getting to work, and generally getting around town.
Reduces number of miles you need to drive
Let’s say you need to stop at the pharmacy, the grocery store, a big box store, and the library. Here are the distances you need to drive to reach each one from your home (I’m making these numbers up):
Pharmacy: 4 miles, 10 minutes*
Grocery store: 4 miles, 10 minutes
Big-box store: 4.5 miles, 11 minutes
Library: 3 miles, 8 minutes
*Actual drive time could be longer depending on traffic.
If you visit each store separately over the course of a week, you end up driving a total of 31 miles (from home to each store and back). That’s a total drive time of about 78 minutes—more if traffic is bad.
But if you set aside an hour or two to do all those trips at once, you can drastically shorten your time behind the wheel. I plugged it into Google Maps and found a nice circle route that took a total of 31 minutes with just 12 miles of driving—less than half of what the time and mileage would be if you did them individually.
Want to take this to the next level? Figure out the route that allows you to make more right turns (if you live somewhere that you can turn right on red). There’s less time spent waiting at lights if you’re making right turns, which makes the trip even more efficient.
Saves you gas—and reduces emissions
It’s pretty obvious how driving fewer miles saves you gas and reduces your emissions, but it’s more than just total miles driven. Engines run more efficiently when they’re warm. Short trips generally don’t give the engine enough time to reach an optimal temperature, which means each of those individual trips is even less efficient than they would be with a warm engine. Your car is using more gas, which means you’re emitting even more carbon dioxide from the tailpipe.1
Warm the engine the efficient way
It’s common in cold weather to let the car idle until it’s warm, but that’s highly inefficient—not to mention a tremendous waste of gas. The best way to warm an engine in winter is to let it idle for about 30 seconds, then start driving.2 Driving warms the engine (and the interior) much faster than idling—and the gas you’re burning is going toward reaching your destination, rather than sitting still.
I tend to focus my errands on one part of town for any particular trip and fit in as many as I can along the route. It makes a huge difference. I work from home, so I don’t have a daily commute. All of my driving is running errands, dropping off or picking up kids, or getting to my own activities, and I put just over 5,000 miles on my car last year.
If you like One Simple Thing, please forward to a friend who might be interested in taking steps toward a healthier planet!
Energy Saver. Fuel Economy in Cold Weather. https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/fuel-economy-cold-weather
Energy Saver. Fuel Economy. https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/fuel-economy