Let’s Talk About Fuel Economy And Lifted Trucks

A meditation on prices and purpose

I bought a tank of gas on the California coast Monday morning. At $5.15 for 87 octane, it would have been brutal filling up one of my trucks, both of which return miles per gallon in the low teens. Fortunately, I was driving a rental Nissan Altima, but it looks like prices like that may be coming for the rest of the country too. Just yesterday, Iran struck three cargo ships transiting the Persian Gulf.

You “lift” a truck in order to clear large tires. Large tires have a longer footprint, increasing traction on loose surfaces. They also roll more easily over obstacles, and increase the approach, breakover and departure angles responsible for determining the outright size of stuff your truck can climb onto, over, and off. Large tires are also heavier tires. So while the increased size decreases your effective gear ratio, increasing the amount of gas your engine needs to burn to spin them, the extra weight also requires the same thing. Those already compounding factors are then made worse by the added wind resistance created not only by the larger tires, but also the taller vehicle.

Here in America, where popular culture somehow manages to at once fetishize the automobile even while preventing most people from learning anything about how cars and trucks work, it’s common to think of “lifts” in terms of choices centered around vanity. The four-wheeled equivalent of wearing pair of cowboy boots, sort of.

And within the popular context where a driver’s choice of vehicle is a purely symbolic representation of your socioeconomic status, which subset of conspiracy theories you subscribe to, and reflection of which specific neighbors you consider your enemy, I get why people wouldn’t understand my choice of automobile. I’m an unemployed writer who believes ears tend to stay shot, and I try resist the urge to hate people who hate others. But my Ford Fuckin’ Ranger is serving shade tree mechanic.

And all that gets wrapped up into wider fashion. Where’s that going? Well the last time a president stumbled into a conflict with Iran, the resulting oil crisis created a phenomenon called “stagflation,” and that period’s high prices and low wages sound a lot like today’s K-shaped economy. Back then, it become fashionable to do more with less. And for automobiles, those conditions gave rise to the Japanese economy car, while American gas guzzlers entered a phase unfondly remembered as the malaise era.

So I understand why my choice in vehicles sometimes marks me as an other, and even an other who should be subject to the Internet equivalent of being run out of town on a rail. After discussing my personal choice in vehicles with Matt Farah a couple of weeks ago, people from the cesspool that is YouTube’s unmoderated community suggested my Ranger is nothing more than a “safety blanket” and that I’d be better off in a Subaru. Or that I was a hypocrite for identifying the fact that the very idea of a personal carbon footprint was created by an ad agency in service of distracting from the manifest evil that powers British Petroleum. That’s nothing new. A few years back, a fellow journalist tweeted me a “how dare you,” after I’d finished installing that one-off long travel suspension system (colloquially referred to as a “lift kit” in uncivilized circles) on my wife’s Land Cruiser.

Sometimes I wish it were all that simple. It would be nice if an economy car was exactly as capable as a pickup truck, just in a more socially acceptable package. I’d love to drive a 40 MPG Ford Maverick, at least here in town, and especially when I stop for gas. But the thing about image is that it’s not reality.

That’s as true for folks who think they’re outdoorsy as it is for anyone else. Buy a $400 Arc’Teryx t-shirt, complement it with a socially aware ball cap, go hike the same trail everyone else does, and I can understand why you find yourself with the impression that you don’t need much more than a Prius to reach that parking lot.

But spend a few years doing that, get tired of people’s untrained Pomeranians attacking your dog, go looking for greater challenges, and you may just encounter a a scenario that requires four-wheel drive. And eventually, maybe even one that dictates those big tires.

There’s actually far more of the latter than there is the former. Especially, but not just in this country, with its 640 million acres of public land. And spend some time out in the mountains or the desert or the forest, away from other people, and the downsides inherent in the tools it takes to do that will begin to feel worth it. Even at $5-a-gallon.

You can, of course, take steps to reduce the amount of gas you burn, even while driving a lifted truck. Fuel use is a function of speed, so slow down. Remember that advertised fuel economy numbers are calculated using a test in which the top speed is only 60 MPH. Every truck, and every driver’s bad habits are different, but reducing your highway speed by only 10 MPH can be enough to decreasing your burn by 10 to 40 percent. And on a truck, that can add up to a lot of gas.

One reason for all this misperception is that the way America talks about fuel economy is misleading. While the difference between 10 and 15 miles per-gallon is 50 percent, the difference between 30 and 40 MPG is is only one-third. Switch that to liters burned per 100 kilometers of driving, and it can be easier to understand the actual difference. A 10 MPG truck uses 23.5 liters ever 100km, where a 15 MPG one uses only 15.6. A 30 MPG Subaru uses 7.8 liters to a Hybrid Ford Maverick’s 5.9. The deltas we can create in those numbers for ourselves are where my interest lies: habits that add up to 2.2 gallons saved for every 62 miles could, at those California prices, keep $12.88 in your wallet each hour that you spend on the highway.

But math is hard and prices are scary. This summer, if the Strait of Hormuz is still a war zone, those big, illuminated prices outside every gas station aren’t going to have Americans thinking about learning to drive, they’re going to keep people home. And, for people like me who genuinely relish the time we get to spend outdoors, especially when that time is spent away from other people, that’s going to add up to wide open highways and empty trails.

Wave if you see me out there, burning up miles to the tune of big tread blocks. But hopefully you won’t.

Top photo: Corey Lynn Tucker

A journalist with more than two decades of experience working around the world, Wes Siler is here to cut through the outrage and disinformation to bring you the factual, insightful, actionable reporting you need to understand what’s going on. Upgrading to a paid subscription supports this reporting, and buys personal access to Wes, who will help you save money on gear, and prepare for real life.