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LivingLikeEachDayIsMyLast

Price Of Fuel Versus Trip Distance

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As the price of fuel continues to rise, the wife and I tend to shorten the distance we travel.

Those trips out of state are few and far between these days. When, not if, the price of a gallon of fuel makes it to $5 or more, we will have to give up our lifelong passion of motorhoming and camping.

As it has been said trillions of times, all good things will come to pass. However, it has been a fine ride with abundant memories. :rolleyes:

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As the price of fuel continues to rise, the wife and I tend to shorten the distance we travel.

I tend to agree with you that as fuel goes up, we tend to travel shorter distances or maybe not as much.

Since fuel can me a major portion of our expense, I look at the overall picture. In our area gas is about $3.15 a gallon. If it were to go up to $6.30 a gallon tomorrow, I would consider going half as far or half my number of trips.

I also agree with your quote at the bottom of your post ........"I've worked all of my life, now it's time to play."

We just have to play less often........... Rather than not at all !

Paul

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Guest Wayne77590

It is of concern, but I think I would try and cut back in other areas. We sure do eat out a lot when we travel and that may be one area to cut back on.

Traveling 1500 miles, with my typical 8.9 mpg at $5 a gal. versus $3 a gal. would cost me an extra $338, or there about. I could stay long in spots to get weekly rates, cut back on eating out, and there probably are a few other areas that I could make do with less.

It is the traveling and sightseeing this wonderful country that I enjoy. I hope to continue to do that.

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Guest BillAdams

Since everything is going to go up in price with time, have you also set a limit at what point you will stop driving a car, buying a steak, drinking milk, having a scotch or a glass of wine (never mind, I already know the answer to that one :rolleyes: ).

We can't stop inflation, I just wish it would come at us a little slower sometimes.

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My wife Susan and I head down to Palm Springs Ca. for 6 weeks during the winter. The round trip from Winnipeg is about 5000 mi. Before we bought a motorhome we use to fly down,rent a car and stay in a condo. Then we started driving down. Taking our motorhome down is still alot cheaper than it was before. I think the key as was mentioned is staying for awhile. Just my two cents. smokeater75

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I'll sell the stick house before I change my RV travel plans. Been doing this since 1978 and it is in my blood. I travel 5+ months of the year and do not plan to change. 2 months of touring and 3 months extended stay (for up to a month at a time) where ever we are please to stay. It's been this way in the past and it will be that way in the future.

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I'm jealous Gary, for now at least,,, :rolleyes:

We're fortunate in that within 200 miles there are numerous "local" areas to be explored and enjoyed.

Here's another way to look at it, our boat with 400 gal diesel capacity averages 1 nmpg per gallon. Half the speed, half the distance and we can still enjoy wilthout worrying about the fuel cost.

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We tend to eat out a bit less, but don't back off the MH use. One thing we do which saves us on fuel is to travel back roads. When I get my rig above 60 the mileage tends to start decreasing rapidly, so we do the 55 roads and see the real country. The other advantage is that the restaurants in small towns seem to be less expensive.

We spent over 50 years working and now I'm going to play a bit!

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We're fortunate in that within 200 miles there are numerous "local" areas to be explored and enjoyed.

I think we all live someplace like that if we look around. Problem is that some of us live in snow counrty, and that eliminates the winter months.

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We have traveled when diesel was close to $4/gallon. I figured a 3,000 mile trip (8.5 miles/gallon) added $355 for the trip, if the fuel cost was $3/gallon. We can handle that on a 4 month trip to see our vast beautiful country. We stay longer at each RV park and cook at the RV more. I would re-figure our travel plans at $6/gallon but we would still go, just not so far. Good travels everyone.

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I have a 2004 monaco windsor with a ISL400CUMMINS it get 8mpg. I had PDI tune the engine now i get 13.5 to 14 mpg.

I am not familiar with PDI...where is it located?

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Just a thought - We are heading to Alaska this year from our home in NC. The fuel cost round trip will run about $4,500 with our diesel pusher. We could not afford that if we hadn't gotten a summer job in Alaska. We will work three days and have off the rest of the week. The wife and I should clear $6,100 working just 3 - 8 hour days each for about 4 months. Pays for the fuel - some food and a little beer. As I said just a thought. :rolleyes:

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I feel kind of sad that no one says they are apalled by these fuel prices and instead of complaining to each other to complain to our government who stands in the way of exploration and refining. We have more oil than all of the middle east countries combined but our leaders are beholden to the special interests who don't want exploration. I am not going down without a fight, I am contacting my senators and congressman to do something about this. Stop sending our petro dollars to countries who want to kill us and keep those dollars here and create some high paying jobs and lower fuel costs.

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I guess I could deal with the high cost of fuel, I just wish the increase would've held off til I was closer to home. At least I got the going part of the trip out of the way before the lid blew off. Highest price so far was $4.19/gal at Chiriaco, CA on I-10. My own fault for not fueling sooner.

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Gee, denpalmer, that sounded just a bit political. I won't go into the many reasons why I disagree, but only say that I'll be going to Ireland in April, and wish the fuel there is going to be as cheap as it is here. Heck, I would settle for it being just twice our price. When you check on what I'm saying, remember the fuel there is priced per liter, not per gallon. The old school teacher in me can't help but ask a question! Which companies have posted the most profit for the last year?

Ward

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Hey Breeves 43, what all did PDI do to achieve your results? I went to the website and they offer tuning plus a computer control module replacement. Did they do any other modifications?

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For everyone's info, I contacted PDI as Breeves 43 has yet to expand on what was done to his motorhome. PDI is a great company. They explained that virtually everyone gets 1-1.5 mpg increase after they have "tuned" the diesel. The significant increase reported by Breeves is rare to the point that they could not cite anyone else with a similar experience. I will probably have my 08 American Eagle "tuned" at PDI as a 1.5 mpg increase is still significant (percentage wise) when considering I currently get 6.1 with our 500 horsepower cummings.

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Guest BillAdams

breeves43 may simply have been posting what turns out to be an ad for the company as these are the only 2 posts he has ever made on this forum.

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I live in Alaska and most of the great places are over 200 miles from Wasilla. I solved part of this problem by storing my motorhome at local business's near my destination. I have a toad and after arriving at my chosen destination, I spend a week end, a week or what ever time I have before driving my toad back home. I find a business or individual near my destination that will allow me to park on their property for usually $2 per day. I return and either stay there or move to another location that I want to explore. Then I repeat the process. My MH only comes home at the end of the season. It has worked great for me. I have been in the lower 48 for the last 6 months and find all kinds of RV Parks that offer storage at reasonable prices. I look forward to continuing to live on the road for extended periods by adjusting my daily cost using this method.

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It boils down to if you can afford to play, you can afford to pay. To what extent is different to each of us. We may change some of the ways we do things in our travel plans a bit., But we surely won't jump out of the pan and into the fire. We travel now and will be traveling in the future. Our rig won't be sold or mothballed. We may stay longer on our stops, and not travel as far as we'd like, and not see quite as much as we'd like at the moment, but tomorrow will be a different day.

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Guest BillAdams

I agree. As an example, we are going to be in Perry, GA in March for the FMCA rally and then we will at the GLASS FMCA rally in Berrien Springs, MI in May. Since we had some extra time between the 2 events we "were" going to Wash., DC to visit our old stomping grounds and do a small rally in the area. Now, with fuel prices going up we will be taking a more direct route and "resting" longer. This will save over 500 miles of driving but still allow us the same end result. We will now get to tour areas along the way that we have not visited in the past and save some money, to boot!

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